


Disrupted

by theoneandonlylittlebird



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark Castle, Drama & Romance, F/M, Humor, Violence but not protracted or all that graphic, We Are Both
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2018-07-15 22:11:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 44,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7240516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoneandonlylittlebird/pseuds/theoneandonlylittlebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whilst visiting the Dark Castle during her accidental time travel, Emma can't keep her mouth shut and Belle overhears. Her tiny slip of the tongue causes mighty ripples and Rumple struggles with the consequences to the timeline. Set in Season 3: Snow Drifts and There's No Place Like Home. Rumbelle. Rated E as of Chapter 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoldenRumbelle](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=GoldenRumbelle).



"It's a miracle you two fell for each other."

Her words rattled around in his head echoing oddly.

Seeing the future in some ways left him rather blind to the present. Why had he not seen this before? Rumple had sent Belle out of the room before the stranger could taint her future any further since the big mouthed blond had demonstrated an astonishing lack of self regulation. She seemed to regurgitate whatever thought refluxed its way to consciousness. No wonder their arrival left the timeline in tatters. As if that lecherous pirate were not threat enough to his Belle. 

The pirate himself had all the mannerisms of a yippie little dog including the horrifying tendency to mount everything that walked by too slowly. No chance would he take with Belle on that front. Milah had been quite bad enough. It seemed too late for the blond, though.

It was then that Rumple heard his own thoughts going by. His chest clenched in around his heart knowing that the woman had been right. Her words had rumbled in his mind as did his other foretellings. They were true and he could feel it all the way through, warming him. Rumple was half way across the room in pursuit of his maid before he realized he had to see her.

He found her tucked up in a chair near the fire in her library. The light cast her in golden and reddish hues turning her hair to brass. The sight absorbed Rumple and he soaked in the feelings which had his insides shivering from heart to groin. Her contentedness, relaxation in his home jumped out at him like words on the pages of a book. This fact, this absoluteness, should have startled him when he had first noticed it. But he had never first noticed it, had he? Until now. Somehow, she was right in his home and he never noticed the nervousness slipping away into the past leaving her to fit seamlessly into his life. A part of him like his scales and claws. A fittedness he could not deny. He stood, staring at her while his thoughts tumbled over one another in an attempt to find a coherent sentence.

She noticed and called him on it, "Rumple? Is everything alright? Have your visitors gone?"

Belle put her book down and came to him with curiosity on her features.

"Yes, yes they're gone. I came because you didn't dust the-" Rumple cut himself off and paced away from her twisting his fingers together in front of him. "Oh never mind that," he said changing his mind yet again, he had to tell her, "You heard what she said, did you not?"

His Belle, who had worn a bemused and patient smile, froze and met his gaze directly. "Yes," she whispered. He could see in the motion of her chest that her breathing had picked up speed and his insides trembled faster at the sight.

"Then I will have to make you a dose of the forgetting spell as well."

"What? Why? I have known for quite some time now, Rumple." Belle's protests came from a place of pain and she was all but begging him.

His gruff response came automatically over the top of her protests, "Because your knowledge of that conversation might damage the future. A very precious-" he stopped, "You knew?"

Rumple stared at Belle all false bravado and confidence evaporated in an instant.

Belle had tears in her eyes, "Of course I knew! For my part and I more than suspected for yours. Don't take this away from us, Rumple. Don't take this from yourself. You deserve happiness. We both do."

Rumplestiltskin, Dark One for longer than nearly any living person could remember, had no words. He did not know what to say. So he stared into the tear-luminescent blue eyes of the person he loved. And he did love her, now that it had been unceremoniously blurted out by a mouthy time traveler. How did that- no, that was not important just now. He finally whispered, "I don't have a choice, I can't risk it."

Her skirts invaded his field of vision where it had fallen to the floor as she approached him.

"Why can't I know you? Talk to me, Rumple, for once. What can't you risk? If you are going to drug me, what harm is there in telling me before you do?" Belle's voice, while gentle, was tight with her unshed tears. He wanted to hold her against him and rock her until the world fell away.

But he did not do that. He looked up at her instead, giggling and poking a finger toward her, and said, "You're too smart for your own good, it'll get you killed one day I'm sure. Probably by me."

"No. Not this time, Rumple." Belle grabbed his pointing digit and startled him into looking her in the eyes, "I'm right, now tell me."

Falling into her eyes a second at a time, Rumple realized he could not rely on his willpower to keep from kissing her for the next few days until he could dose then both and then have everything go back to normal. So he relented. He murmured, "My son. I'm looking for my son. They are from the future and have begun changing the timeline. We have to forget or I may never see him again."

"Oh," she said softly. The hand which had captured his felt warmer and softer than he had dared imagine. He watched her sooth his with it and his breath caught. Before he realized what was happening, her other thumb caught a tear on its way to his cheek. She licked her lips, looking at his for the briefest of moments but he had seen her do it. Belle's mind moved with the grace of a lightening bolt, "Then why come up here to confront me about it? You could have just pretended that I did not hear that and we would have gone on as before."

"Oh no, no we would not have because you did hear. The changes have already happened and I had to know." Rumple took his hand determinedly back to his side and she dropped hers slowly back to her skirts.

Tears pooled in Belle's eyes but she did not look away, "When will you do it? Will you even tell me first? Or just slip it into our tea?" Her eyes overflowed at the last words.

Rumple fought not to take her in his arms then and there and instead told her quietly, "I can do it that way if that is what you would prefer. I don't know how long we have before they return having set matters to rights again, or I have to save them from their own stupidity and do the job myself. If I even can. But I suppose we have at least a few days before I can safely dose us both."

"A few days?" Belle searched his eyes for a moment, "Then we have a few days, for this?" 

She gestured between them.

Rumple opened his mouth to reply but his thoughts veered off after hers and instead he gave her the tiniest of hopeful smiles, "Yes, a few days, if you wish it."

Belle gave him a trembling smile and her hand sought his. Rumple lost himself in her gaze as he held her hand, lips twitching with unformed words. Then he gave up trying to figure out what else he should say.

His tiny step eliminated the space between them and he leaned toward her slowly refusing to give over eye contact even at this unfocusable distance. She lifted her chin and he brushed his lips against hers before settling down into a soft kiss. 

But he did not have a chance to revel in her response because a wave of dizziness seized him and his magical senses began draining away as if he were losing consciousness. Rumple clutched at Belle for support and yanked his lips from hers to suck in a deep breath. He clawed frantically at his power. To his immense relief it snapped back into place the second he reached for it. Rumple panted and leaned on Belle.

He only began hearing her again in the middle of a sentence.

"-ok, Rumple? Rumple what's wrong? Rumple do you hear me?"

"Oh, Belle!" He gasped for air, "I should have known! Been prepared. I'm alright now." Rumple straightened but he did not move away from her. He held her waist and caught his breath while he smiled weakly at her. With his power secure, he began trembling again with the force of this new revelation.

"Known what? Talk to me Rumple, are you alright?" Her worried hands fluttered in his hair and over his face and jaw leaving flurries of fire in their wake.

"Yes, I am now. That was, well I may as well tell you since I will wipe both of our memories in a few days time, that was my curse being," he paused, "disrupted."

"Disrupted?"

"No worries now, dearie. Where were we? Ah yes." And he kissed her again. This kiss he savored. Her lips were warm and sought his with equitable tenderness. Needing to breathe and not quite daring to believe, he pulled away from her a fraction, "You, you really want this? With me?"

Belle gave him a patient half smile and shook her head, "Oh, Rumple, what will it take to convince you?"

He was about to answer but he never got the chance because his lips no longer belonged to him. In a moment of clarity, with her lips and tongue caressing his own, Rumple realized that it was not he who had acquired someone in a deal, but her.


	2. Chapter 2

The giggling was because she had just squeezed a handful of his bottom through the leather.

He pulled his lips from hers though he still held her against his body, "Of all the things I didn't know about my maid, this is one I thought never to find out. Is it my trousers you like? It can't be me, after all."

Her expression turned exasperated even with his playful tone, "It's you, Rumple. Just you." To his surprise and delight she not only left her hand where it was but began to knead and explore his hip and backside. Her other hand had wriggled beneath his collar to stroke the scales on his neck. Could melting be a cause of Dark One death?

She renewed her efforts to kiss him into the next century and Rumple began to drift on the sensation. As warm and solid as Belle felt in his arms with True Love howling in his chest, he keenly mourned what would come in a few short days, if not less. In spite of a sense of vitality not known to him in centuries, Rumple had also never felt so fragile. Just a bit of dandelion fluff on the wind, a moment and Belle would be beyond his reach. 

For a time at least. The Swan, Jones had called her that-whatever it meant, said she was the product of True Love and she knew that he and Belle were in love. Could it be some kind of future title? She must be some kind of leader. No one would name their child that, after all, how ridiculous. Anyway, he and Belle would love in the future, a long way into the future then, after the curse. Would he find the courage to approach Belle without remembering what the Swan had said? 

Rumple doubted it, a coward to the core after all. How and when they would find one another and decide to love remained a mystery. Still the coward, this mystery he was afraid to unravel with the Sight, even if the answers could bring temporary comfort to them both. 

And temporary it would be, because nothing, no power in this realm or any other would prevent him from doing what ever it took to protect a future in which he found Baelfire. Rumple just could not bring himself to peek. Aside from which, whatever future he saw could be even more painful than this present tangle. It could make him hesitate out of fear of losing Belle or any other wretched eventuality. Rumple knew his conviction now about giving Belle up temporarily could crumble and ruin everything if he did not take the utmost care in this matter. True Love, after all, was the most powerful magic in all the realms.

But in this precious present he had grown deliciously too warm and his trousers chafed appallingly. He broke their kiss to catch his breath and stare into the blue eyes of home. And she stared back into his inhuman ones without blinking as if she could possibly see in him what he did in her. Evidence be damned, Rumple could not fathom how anyone, and certainly not someone as wondrous as Belle, could see anything but the hideous hide of the Dark One. Tainted, twisted and foul. The fetid breath he could mask, but the centuries worth of rot on the inside he could not. Miraculous indeed that she could see what little of him remained under the heap of dark deeds clogging the light away from his heart. 

A consuming hunger for her light began to consume him. He wanted her with him in every conceivable way and he knew he would never let her go. He told himself that the potion would be only a temporary detour from their path together. If Rumple believed in anything, he believed in magic and that it would put them back on the road to his future with both Baelfire and Belle. They would love in the future. The Swan's words had left no room for equivocation. Nothing, no short term comfort, no bright arc of light could jeopardize that future. The price, however, for their forgetting, what would that be?

"I can hardly believe this is real," Belle whispered smiling at him and yanking him out of his woolgathering.

"Oh Belle," he sighed, a new thought dawning on him, "I should let you go. Let you go back to your family. You can't want to stay here knowing that I will destroy this in a few days. If I weren't a monster, I would let you. But I am a monster and I cannot risk my son, not even for you. How can you want anything to do with me, knowing this?"

"You're not a monster. You're a father and you love your son. That proves me right. And that is why I'll stay. I'd keep my deal with you, regardless, but I'll stay with you because I want to."

He shook his head in disbelief, "All these months I just thought myself becoming an even bigger fool than I was for bringing you here as my price. Centuries of careful planning and then you, here." Rumple trailed off securing her more tightly in his arms and unable to fully believe this surreal turn of events, "I spun at night trying to forget you so you would still be just my maid in the morning. A trinket acquired in a deal. I haven't spun so much since the last time I propped up a kingdom." He stared at her in earnest, "I would never have asked this of you, Belle, please believe me. I don't ask this of you now. I am not that kind of monster."

"Not. A. Monster." Belle had a hand in his hair and she used this leverage to kiss him again.

Belle clutched him as if she sought to share his skin which left no space in which to hide his own earnestness. Her hand had not left his bottom or even deviated from its mission. On the contrary, while he kissed her with a reverent tenderness, Belle slid her hand between his legs from behind to stroke the soft flesh of his undercarriage through the overheated leather. 

He bucked against her involuntarily and gasped in surprise, eyelids fluttering. He broke the kiss and arched against her when her fingers did not take flight or so much as cease their ministrations. 

"Belle, stop. You must stop." Wheezy wizard indeed, but not the situation in which he imagined himself living up to that moniker. 

Belle did stop, then, frowning at him. "Why?"

Wishing to avoid seeing her disdain, Rumple closed his eyes and murmured, "I do not wish to be teased."

"Teased?" Belle remained still under his hands in the silence for a moment, then she said, "You think I tease you? Open your eyes and look at me Rumplestiltskin." He did and what he saw was not disdain, but despair. "Your self-doubt, self-hatred, casts aspersions on my very real feelings, Rumple. What do I have to do to make you believe?"

He stared at her, "I do not doubt your feelings, but you know what I am. You cannot want this from a beast. You deserve far better than me." His eyes stung at this admission but he could not look away nor could he stop clutching her against him. He wet his kiss-tender lips before continuing, "I already have the evidence of your feelings, but feelings are not the same as- not the same as what you have just suggested you wish from me."

A tiny furrow appeared in Belle's delicate brow and she licked her own lips. "Are you saying this is not something you want?"

Neither of them would believe him should he deny it, pressed together as they were, so he opted for the truth, "I think you already know that answer. I am the Dark One, Belle. The Dark One."

She blinked, seemingly in non-comprehension. "Are you-" she stopped biting her lip and flushing, "are you not like other men?"

She could not be serious with this. He would have thought her beguiled by magic if he had not known better. A bit stupefied by her forward question, he answered it, "Not precisely, no, but I am similar enough in essentials. But you are missing the point. I am the Dark One and you would be defiled in the estimation of every person in all the realms should you tether yourself to me in such a way. As you are now, you are my prisoner, a fate no one will judge you for. But this," he brushed his knuckles along her cheek, "this is unforgivable."

"That, Rumplestiltskin, is for me to decide. My fate, my decision." She frowned at him in mock sternness and pointed a finger at his nose, "I thought we made that clear already."

If not for the twinkle in her eyes, she would have been menacing.

As it was, Rumple swallowed hard and twitched definitively beneath his trousers. In one last attempt to save the woman he loved from himself he warned her, "There's no going back from this. This cannot be undone."

"Actually, Rumple, you are going to wipe our memories. All of this will be undone in a couple of days." She was right, neither of them would remember this conversation nor anything about what might follow once he returned the intruders to their place in time. "But," she continued in a tight voice, "I have no interest in convincing you of anything. I want to be chosen."

He knew he was lost. "Belle, I will always choose you."

"And I choose you." Her hopeful smile trembled. But only until he closed the distance between them once more to kiss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do be reasonable, Rumple, it's impolite to keep the lady (and us) waiting.


	3. Chapter 3

Rumplestiltskin had no idea how much time had passed since either of them had last said anything. The crackling of the fire and the wet, sticky sounds they made said everything he wanted articulated. Seemingly, the same was true for Belle because she returned each kiss of his with at least one of her own. If his hands found themselves stroking her hair, so hers tangled in his. She ran soft fingers over the architecture of his ears and he traced one of hers with his nose.

The problem in his pants had rather increased.

But these tentative first explorations were more important and that problem could be solved later, by hand if Belle came to her senses and realized who, what, she was kissing.

Belle showed no inclination of the sort however. She had not tried to touch him between his legs since he told her to stop, but when her tongue and teeth found their way back to the shell of his ear, Rumple wondered about a direct connection between his ears and his groin. His maid turned out to be a delicate and precise woman, never biting him to the point of pain or causing his ear to become a sloppy mess. No, Belle alternately gave him delicate nibbles with sharp teeth and ran her lips over the cartilage pathways.

Rumple clutched her against him puffing his breath into her soft hair. His traitorous hips had begun a predictable rhythm some time ago the which he only noticed when she finally loosed his ear and met his hips with her own.

He opened his eyes to stare at her rather unable to voice the apology for the intrusive instincts of his body. Her eyes were wide and dark and her tongue wet her lips as she glanced at his. Intent on kissing her again he leaned in, but abruptly she release her hold on him. Relief and rejection held him mute for the fraction of a second it took him to master his limbs (all five of them) and unlatch himself from her body.

Before he could say anything though, she grabbed his hand and headed out of the room without regard to whether he would follow when towed.

He would.

The Dark Castle, a substantial edifice, did not lack for hallways and back passages and so her destination remained a mystery until she pushed open the door to her room.

Rumple stilled her on the threshold, "Your room?"

"Mine is the only bed I've seen in this whole place. If you find it unsuitable, you have only yourself to blame," she told him flatly.

He gave her a comedic scowl for effect, "I think not."

He had only to imagine a more conducive alternative, give her a tiny sly smile and then he gestured between them as purple smoke hazed his vision a second before clearing to reveal their destination.

The room would have been dark but for the tall candles which gave the heavily draped room muted golden hues rather than the harsh light of day. The soft intake of breath beside him distracted Rumple from admiring his handiwork. Belle still had his hand in hers, warm and smooth, and the candlelight glowed against her features.

While her eyes wandered the room, presumably taking in the enormous four poster bed with midnight blue drapes and golden lace trimmings or perhaps the swirling patterns of the deep red wood furniture, Rumple's eyes wandered over his love. The color was high in her face and her lips reddened and pert from their kissing. The graceful curve of her neck, the hollow of her throat and the swell of her tucked away breasts transfixed him. Rumple stood spellbound and lost in his observations. Soon his lips would follow where only his eyes had been before and-

She was speaking, "-is where you sleep? Why haven't I seen this room before? I clean your laboratory and all your treasures, what is here you wished to hide from me?"

He met her gaze and licked his own suspiciously wet lips, "The Dark One does not require sleep. I have not had need of a bed in many years. We'll call this our room."

Belle blinked rapidly at him, then smiled, "Our room."

The openness in her face made his eyes sting for a moment before she was kissing him tenderly again. But this kiss was only brief and she gave him an intent look before tugging on his hand in the direction of the bed.

"Belle, Belle, wait a moment." She turned a look of barely constrained frustration on him at that. "I know you want this with me, and there can be no question for my part, but I do wish you would consider this more carefully. I am a monster and not, that is, perhaps a man could save you the trouble of me? I've no doubt we can find one willing, and gentle, and understanding and, and this is not something I should take from you."

Belle was staring at him with her mouth open in apparent indignant disbelief, but then she closed it and her features softened, "Rumple," she stroked his cheek with her palm, "I love that you care for me, but is there perhaps another reason you hesitate? Are you," she licked her lips, "are you so very different as all that?"

He choked and gaped at her, "No, no, not like that. It's nothing so extreme. But, dearie, what would a princess know of these matters?"

His relief that he had found a way to turn the attention away from that line of discussion only lasted until she opened her mouth again, "Is that what this is about? You think me wholly inexperienced?" She smirked at him, then grew a bit more pensive, "You know I was engaged to Gaston?" He nodded, dreading where this was headed, and she gave him a shy look under her lashes, "You speak of gentle and understanding. I knew I would never get those things from Gaston when I would need them most, so, I made another arrangement."

"You made a deal, for that?" Rumple felt duly impressed.

"I did. A childhood friend of mine and her husband agreed to assist me in exchange for better paying work in the castle." Belle's gaze flicked back to his eyes from where she had been looking over his shoulder during this most interesting utterance. "Do you think me a common harlot now? Someone you would not want in your bed?"

"Not at all!" He covered her cheeks with his palms gently, "I think you braver than I knew." He kissed her softly, once, then he said, "Brave as you are, there is no shame in deciding that a monster is an unsuitable lover."

Why had she not moved away from him, taken the out he offered?

Belle bopped his nose with hers, teasing and then said, "Let's make a deal then. You show me how it is that you are not precisely like other men and then I will decide for myself what I find suitable."

"Belle," he sighed, "I would have done anyway. I would do no other way. No deal required."

"Do we have one, just the same?" She was placating him and he knew it, or more generously, trying to put him at ease, he suspected.

"Yes of course, sweetheart." As if he could deny her anything she asked of him. Almost anything.

She tugged him in the direction of the bed and his heart began to race. He ached beneath the leather, their conversation having done nothing to alleviate his ardor for her.

He turned with a dancer's grace to face her when they reached the bed where he gave her an elegant flourish gesturing at his person.

Belle accepted his welcome and smiled. She began with his cravat.

Sweat slicked his hairline as his love stroked his scales along his clavicle toward the hollow of his throat with gentle fingers. It was everything Rumple could do to hold still while she undid the buttons of his waistcoat one at a time. His maid was unwrapping him like a gift. She snuffled his neck when she moved closer to pull his shirt from his trousers and he did not even try to stifle his sigh. Her fingers skimmed his waist as she liberated a little fabric at a time. Free from his waistcoat, the silk of his shirt whispered around him as it obeyed her little tugs.

Rumple's eyes rolled skyward when she finally arrived in the front and her fingers brushed his navel freeing the last of his shirt from his trousers. He resisted the urge to kiss her until they both asphyxiated when her knuckles grazed the fine scales on his belly. When her touch disappeared he instantly dropped his gaze to watch her again. She was breathing faster too staring at his exposed flesh.

Belle reached for his hand with one of hers and then gently tugged the laces at his wrist to unfasten his cuff. She pushed the rust colored frill up just enough to expose the soft underside of his wrist and skim her fingers slowly toward his elbow before repeating the motions for his other wrist.

With that accomplished, she grasped the hem of his shirt and looked up at him with an eyebrow raised.

"Yes, Belle, please." Rumple focused on his breathing and not the leather bound discomfort below.

His eyes closed as the silk went over his head and he reopened them at her soft gasp. She was staring at his chest so he looked down. Her parted lips and raised eyebrows did not look like disdain, but wonder. His scales glimmered in the candle light and Belle placed a tentative hand against his breast stroking gently over his nipple. Rumple shuddered and tensed low in his abdomen.

"You're." Belle stopped and took a deep breath, "Rumple, you're beautiful."

His eyes flew to meet hers. He spluttered, "What?"

The fondness in her gaze could not be mistaken, "I said, you're beautiful."

"Your vision must be failing from all that reading." Rumple wrapped his arms around his chest snatching her hand into his as he taunted her, but he raised the hand he held to his lips speaking against her knuckles, "Before you is a monster and by definition, not beautiful."

"My vision is perfect. Besides, you haven't seen yourself in a mirror in so long, how would you know?" Belle gave him a shy smile.

He kissed her hand and smiled before releasing it. Then he followed her eyes down, down his body to his trousers and what distended them beneath. The leather would never resume its prior shape without magic. Good thing he had magic. In spite of his current predicament, he liked these trousers.

"Is it alright, Rumple?" Belle's hand trembled visibly half way to his waistband.

"Yes, Belle, always yes."

Her fingers traced his waistband all the way around to the back before she looked up at him in puzzlement and opened her mouth to speak.

Then he realized the problem, "Ah yes, magic. Being the Dark One does allow me to circumvent certain fashion concessions." Belle gave a genuine laugh and Rumple snapped his fingers.

The immediate relief and coolness extracted a groan from him at not being constricted so, or being less constricted at least. Now all that remained were his silk small clothes stretched tight over him. He tried to ignore that his current view of Belle was the top of her head, her hair obscuring anything more interesting, while she stared down at him. Instead he guided her hands to the waist band of his small clothes and carefully allowed them off his hips to flutter to the floor around his bare feet.

Belle froze, holding her breath even and Rumple prepared himself for her to judge him too odd to proceed. A part of him hoped for her sake that she would do just that, but Rumple wanted to love his Belle in every sense of the word. He ached for her, wanted to show her all he could and give her every comfort.

When he could tolerate the silence no more, he whispered, "Belle?"

She looked up at him then, apparent confusion on her face, and whispered back, "I don't see how you are different. Rumple?"

He gaped at her. He sure as hell no longer resembled how he had been born. The scales of the Dark One spared no inch of his hide and they made him more textured than his human flesh had been hundreds of years ago. Maybe that was it. He reached for her hand again and led her to grasp him.

He moaned softly trying desperately not to jerk, again, in her hand. In a tense whisper he pleaded with her, "I said I was the same in essentials, but do you really want that, that scaly thing?"

The only reply he got was her kissing him and then gripping him a little tighter before she released him entirely and began a furious assault on the laces of her bodice.

Rumple growled at her and batted her hands away. No longer the examined partner, he pulled her against him to kiss her while he snapped his fingers to rid her of her laces in a puff of magic. He would give them back. Probably.

Belle arched to make room for his mouth along her throat while he removed her bodice and skirts leaving her in her hip-length chemise and small clothes. Now the skin of her back was available to his questing hands and took full advantage stroking her from tale to nape as he nipped along her clavicle.

"Rumple," she breathed between pants. Then her hands left his shoulders to discard her small clothes and kick them aside. He took the cue and yanked her chemise up and over her head. Much as he wanted to behold her for a moment she shoved him backwards onto the bed and scrambled on top of him.

All cogent thought evaporated at the feel of her skin against his. Warm and smooth and nothing between them, she had sandwiched him between their bellies. They both moaned reaching for any flesh they could grasp while their mouths sought disorganized kisses. She was leaving hot trails of wetness where her lower body moved over his.

Unable to wait a moment longer Rumple let go of her enough to magically divest himself of the unkempt claws on the first two digits of his hand. He left behind a close cut smooth nail, even if oddly shaped over what was designed to be the bed of his claws. That accomplished he unceremoniously flipped them so she lay on her back beneath him and he hovered above her on elbow and knees.

"Belle," he dragged her single syllable out for all it was worth and she met his eyes, "May I?"

"Gods yes, Rumple!" She whispered, out of breath.

So he sought the curls between her legs and held her a moment as she whimpered and began to writhe beneath him. Her stomach quivered, tightening and relaxing, as he watched. Then he took the pad of his thumb and began to stroke her softly, root to hood while his mouth sought her breast. Rumple molded his tongue around the taut nipple to suck and draw her breast as deeply within his mouth as possible.

Belle moaned and arched against him so he began to circle her slick entrance with his newly declawed fingers. She cried out when he pushed them gently into her soft, tight cavern. He crooked them and began to stroke her warm insides, slowly at first, but Belle was close already and she whimpered, then grunted while she clamped down around him fluttering in waves as she came down.

But he did not let her come down all the way. He took himself in hand and rubbed her with his end before whispering tightly, "Look at me Belle." She pried her eyes open and he continued, "Is this what you want?"

"Yes, Rumple, I just want you!"

He parted her lips with his other hand, then, in slow strokes, each deeper than the previous, joined them together to their mutual groaning. Belle arched up off the bed and he tried to maintain the slow pace, but honestly, worked up as he was, this would not take nearly what it should, Dark One or not.

Indeed, his careful rhythm disintegrated under her cries as she approached her peak again and they bucked wildly against each other until she clenched him in her vice grip and he exploded in a jet of heat within her.

He had only enough wherewithal not to collapse in a smothering heap on top of her, but instead fell a little to the side even though that meant he slipped from her and she seized his waist and shoulders to hold him against her.

"Oh Belle," he whispered over and over. He dimly registered his name on her lips in an echo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You were all so very patient, hope you enjoyed your reward. Plot next time. Probably. If they can concentrate on what they're supposed to be doing.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr: theoneandonlylittlebird


	4. Chapter 4

Belle had her back to him from where she had been observing the proceedings in his purple glass viewing orb when he reappeared in the great hall, but she was turning to face him already. "Do you really think they can be more help than harm at this point, Rumple?"

"I don't know, but I couldn't leave them to their own wits. We already know how that would turn out." Rumple held his hands out to her and she beamed the brighter at him, if that was possible. His maid had verily glowed all day since their interlude in the new quarters he had created for them. Though it was not as if they had not succumbed at various intervals over the course of the day in sundry locations between bouts of research. And it was not as if the heat did not rush for his groin the moment he had beheld her backside upon his return to the great hall where evidence of their research, and other activities, lay scattered about.

They had made progress, mostly because Belle's work ethic exceeded his own. Rumple begrudged the hour it had taken him to straighten out the wayward pirate and his Swan because every moment he spent on their predicament was a moment he spent without Belle in his arms. That pirate had taken enough from Rumple, more than enough.

So Rumple kissed Belle, or she him, what did it matter? They crossed the intervening space and kissed.

His blood rushed in his ears and he pressed against her knowing that he would be destroying another set of leather breeches if he did not take them off soon. So he whisked them into a small parlor in front of a fire with her beneath him on a thick rug. When the magic cleared from their vision, Belle smiled mischievously up at him and claimed a handful of his backside. She did seem to find great enjoyment there, kneading and urging him to rock against her.

"I missed you." Rumple murmured as he held her gaze.

"And I missed you too, Rumplestiltskin." Belle returned before kissing him, "Now be useful and make our clothes disappear. We have research to do and neither of us will concentrate on it at all until we've finished here."

Feigning shocked dismay, Rumple tisked at her, "I don't think you will be able to concentrate regardless, my greedy little maid."

But he obliged her. The fire warmed their skin and Rumple rubbed his whole body against hers. He clasped her trapezius gently between his teeth and inhaled knowing the identity of the greedy one was not her.

"Better than you and you know it," Belle groaned as he began to gently suck her shoulder muscle. He would not mark her with teeth or suction, though.

He growled as her fingers slipped down the cleft of his backside to her other area of fascination which she massaged and explored with gentle fingers. She had him bucking, panting and whatever train of thought he had had, whatever his plans for her body he had been brewing up, evaporated. Between pants, he found his way to a breast to lick and flick the nipple with his tongue.

He could not have said whose moan was whose.

But he soon found out that depriving Belle of her quarry in order to gain access to his own would not be tolerated. She wriggled out from under him and then used his surprise to get him on his back. She knelt beside him. He stopped trying to move to reengage with her when, in one handful, she circled her thumb and forefinger around his base while her other three fingers cleverly massaged the rest of his fleshy scaled manhood.

Suddenly, her fingers stilled, holding him pleasantly captive, "Now pay close attention." Belle, supporting herself with her other arm leaned over his face to trail her breast along his cheek. Ever a good student, Rumple latched his mouth around the nipple to prevent its escape and Belle sighed above him. "Very good."

She said no more as he sucked and she stroked and they both sweated. With his eyes closed, he focused entirely on sensation. Until he could stand it no more. He snaked an arm between her kneeling thighs and pushed two declawed fingers within her. His princess cried out loud enough to echo through the castle. He increased the action of his tongue.

His fingers, meanwhile, began a slow swirling undulation within her silken chamber while he maintained a gentle but steady pressure on her hood. With his mouth clamped around her breast, Belle's bucking forced Rumple to loop his other hand around her shoulders to keep her in place as he increased his pace with both tongue and fingers.

He heaved his own breath through his nose as Belle had not let up on him in the slightest. Her hand kneaded and released the flesh she cupped in time with his fingers and tongue, though thankfully she maintained her control and moderated her ministrations to keep him from harm. He made sure to grant her the same courtesy.

Feeling that she seemed near the edge, he flickered his fingers rapidly within her. She grunted hard and clamped thighs and insides simultaneously around his fingers and hand. She released him, then, to ride her own wave.

If she had not done so, this would have been over for him.

He did not give her a chance to come down before he rolled her beneath him. Her legs came around his back immediately and she grasped him to line them up herself. 

"Rumple! Now please."

He did not hesitate. Accustomed now as they were to one another, it only took one stroke for their pelvises to meet with him as deep within her as possible. They both cried out. She thrust up against him nearly instantly, already chasing her next wave. Rumple was all to eager to comply. Sweat slicked his scales and her soft skin as she clung to him. He could smell the heady scent of their pleasure and Rumple quickened his rhythm.

When Belle shrieked, arching into his chest and cinching around him he broke with a burst of erratic thrusts and a jet of heat within her while they both gave a few last involuntary jerks.

Neither said anything while the fire crackled beside them and somewhere in the castle a clocked chimed.

"Rumple."

"Hmm?" 

"The rug might not have been the best choice of locations."

"I take your point, dearie. We'll just use the table next time."

"Rumple!" She chided him softly, "You could have taken us anywhere, including our bed, you know."

"Table it is. You don't like laundry anyway. You're terrible at it."

"If you think I'm going to do any more of your laundry..." Belle trailed off threateningly.

"Of course you won't! Not until we both forget this ever happened!" He giggled at her and rolled them so she lay on top of him. Magic came to his hand with barely a thought and he healed her rug burns while he kissed her. His he left as they were.

"Mmm. Thank you, Rumple, but what will the price be for this service?"

"The table next time," he murmured. "I'll make it worth your while, I assure you."

She snickered, "I'll hold you to that, literally."

"I look forward to it." He craned his neck to nuzzle her and kiss her just one more time. "Now," he menaced her mockingly, "back to work!"

Rumple snapped and they appeared dressed in his great hall. The table he had in mind for later frivolities currently bore the weight of their research. The dark faerie wand in question lay negligently off to the side, as if it were not the main thrust of their investigation, in favor of the mountain of books and array of glassware. It had not taken Belle long to discover the problem: only the person who had used the spell themselves could recast it with the wand. But, there was always a loophole. Always.

With that in mind, he and Belle were trying to find a glamor or masking spell that would allow his power to fuel the spell. Or find a way to channel his power through the Swan, or even the pirate- a distasteful prospect to say the least. But, if routing his power through the pirate would kill the pest, accidentally of course, in the process... Belle was currently nose deep in a dark tome about involuntary possession. 

Rumple found himself sneaking frequent looks at his maid. Her hair rustled against the book as she turned her head to the facing page. She was right, her powers of concentration far exceeded his own. Every so often she would scramble for one of the translation dictionaries arrayed in front of her in an arc when she ran across a word or character she did not know. In spite of his lack of respect for her parentage, they had provided her an admirable education.

"Rumple."

So lost in staring at her was he that he did not notice the eye contact until she spoke.

"Have you found that passage on temporary submersion of the target's consciousness yet? I can't recall the full list of ingredients for the transfer potion," Rumple deflected.

"Have you? Or are you getting distracted again?" Belle teased him playfully.

"Of course not! I am only anxious to finish our work so we can get on to-" he swept a few strands of hair behind her ears so he could see her better, "- more interesting activities."

"It's been ten minutes."

"And time is of the essence, dearie!"

"Get back to work Rumple."

He did.

An hour later, Belle's book plopping down on top of his own startled him, but not as much as the sudden feeling of Belle pressing herself against his hunched back to point at the page over his shoulder. She felt warm and soft in all the right places. The scent of her soap drifted to his nose and he took a deep breath. Oh, but she was speaking.

"-found it. Does this look familiar?" She was saying, but his eyes were not on the page. They were closed and he had turned his face to nuzzle her neck. She allowed this for a moment before continuing softly, "I had thought you were lonely, Rumple, when was the last time anyone touched you? Or you them?"

"Nearly thirty-five years. And before that, around two-hundred and seventy odd years with Bae's mother. Neither of them were-" Rumple stopped himself from saying it, "Neither of them were you."

She leaned into his questing nose, snuggling their faces together. "I always have liked older men."

"Have you now?" he chuckled softly.

"Mm-hm. Now, the sooner you get this over with, the more time we have."

She was right so he dragged his face away from hers and dropped his gaze to the book. Of course it was exactly right. "Yes, this will do nicely. Now we can test it."

"We?"

"Whom else? Are you unwilling to have me possess you for a moment or two? I thought we had agreed on this as the most likely alternative." Rumple craned his neck to look at her while he soothed her digits where they had been on the page.

"I had not thought about the need to test it first. I thought you just knew it would work." 

"I love your confidence in me, but no, sweetheart, magic requires experimentation. If you are unwilling, I have no objection to trying it out on the pirate, ideally with a rather messy spell, but I promise you will be in no danger as I will use something far more mundane, and safe, than a time travel spell for our purposes."

Belle pulled away from him then and ran her hands through her hair. She paced the carpet for several repetitions before she spoke again, "I don't know Rumple. I had not considered having you in my head."

"It won't be like that, Belle." He rose, crossed to where she stood, and traced a hand slowly down her back. "For you it will be like sleep walking. I won't be able to see your thoughts or anything like that, but I will have physical control of you which should be enough for me to activate the wand. We'll try something simple like transporting from one end of this room to the other." Listening aptly to his explanation, she had turned to face him with her hand on his chest. "I will first transport us together, then we'll be able to see if this works."

"And the price of this little experiment?" Belle searched his eyes with those startlingly blue ones of her own.

"Since most of the heavy lifting is done with the potion, most of the cost is already paid in ingredients. The rest should be minimal and I will absorb it as I have done for hundreds of years." At her alarmed expression he attempted to mollify her, "Small magic comes with small price tags. The cost of hundreds of years worth of transporting might add up to the occasional fizzle of a small spell and having to recast. Darker magic costs darker things, but convenience magic tends to carry equivalent costs. Small inconveniences which the average person would just chalk up to periodic bad luck. Nothing dire."

She frowned at him, "This worries me Rumple. You use magic all the time for all kinds of things. Are you saying that you are shouldering the burden of all that darkness, more than three-hundred years of it?"

He could not help but smile at her with genuine and warm affection, "My dear Belle, I am the Dark One. The curse itself is a cost. I have earned everything you see, and much that you can't see with your eyes, but that I know you feel with your heart."

She blinked tears away, "I'm worried about you, Rumple."

Rumple suspected that the enormity of what he was had begun to become real for Belle. He took her face in his palm, "This is why I tried to spare you the monster. I don't want you to have to bear this with me. To have to bear, to have to bear me. I am a very heavy load, Belle."

She followed his eyes with her own for a long moment before she said, "You still love. You love your son. You are amazing and I just wish you could see how miraculous you truly are. I am in awe of you, Rumple. All this darkness and still, you shine. You have not lost yourself, and that makes you worth fighting for. Can I help you with the potion?"

Rumple laughed softly in disbelief, then he kissed her briefly but solidly before taking her hand and leading her to the jungle of glassware on the opposite end of the table. He passed his hand through the air in front of them and what he needed from his lab appeared in perfect mise-en-place for their work. 

Neither of them spoke much during the next two hours while they prepared the ingredients for the potion. Both stared at the bubbling concoction waiting for the flash and color change that would signal its completion.

At last the potion flashed from an unfortunate brown to an eye dazzling yellow and released a noxious cloud of foul smelling fumes as it did so.

"You're really going to drink that?" Belle had her nose wrinkled as she pulled her face away from the offending brew.

"Possession is quite dark indeed, part of the price is its less than palatable nature." He waggled his eyebrows at her, "You can give it a go when we're through if you want. We made enough for several attempts, just in case. It could be fun."

"You want me to-" Belle cut herself off with eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Oh yes, if you are so inclined, there are many fun things we could get up to with this. But," he giggled, "work first!"

Several blinks and a smirk went by before Rumple offered her his hand and, as agreed, they transported together from one end of the room to the other.

"Are you ready?" Rumple wrapped her hand around the wand with great care. "You must be very careful holding that, now. Mind you don't wish for anything or flick it around with any kind of intention."

"I don't have magic Rumple, but I'll be careful."

He looked at her earnestly, "Are you ready?"

She nodded at him. Rumplestiltskin took a swig of the potion and waited.

The effects were conveniently quick. He felt a sort of loosening and his consciousness drifted out of his body a bit. Having two perspectives on the room caused a bit of dizziness and nausea until he was able to focus and separate one from the other. His body stayed still looking at Belle, but he floated above her head and the down into her. Both of his bodies swayed as he settled behind Belle's eyes. Focus was critical, he did not want either of them to end up with bruises from this little escapade.

Her mind drifted to the side to make room for his when he nudged her and while he could sense her, that she was there in this body, but he could not hear her thoughts or feel any emotions aside from his own. Nausea boiled up again as he momentarily tried to look through both sets of eyes at the same time. The trick, it seemed was to think of his own body like a memory instead of having two competing sources of the present moment. 

After that, he easily activated the wand with the intent to repeat the transport spell.

It worked. Belle, with her Dark One hitchhiker, arrived elsewhere in the room none the worse for wear. Rumple immediately leapt from her body and back into his own. He stumbled and recovered in time to see her doing the same.

"Belle?" he called out to her and surged forward.

"I'm fine, Rumple. It worked, didn't it?"

He clutched her to him and pressed kisses into her hair, "Oh yes, Belle, it worked. We can send them home and protect what matters most in this world."

To celebrate, they made use of the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay for plot this time! More plot is coming. I'm getting excited about this story as it grows in my head.  
> You can find me on Tumblr @theoneandonlylittlebird.


	5. Chapter 5

Later that night, after Belle had drifted off, Rumple remained awake. Thoughts of warm skin, soft sheets and many nights in the future spent just like this lulled him into a contentment he could only compare to what he had felt holding his son in that first year after his return from the front. Of course, he had paid for that contentment too, with a wife that grew to hate him more every day and an ankle which would never heal properly. This contentment he would never even remember all too soon. He always seemed to be paying a hefty price for any moments like this.

But still, these thoughts did not trouble Rumple because for the first time in hundreds of years, he had real hope. Founded hope, and for more than he ever imagined possible. Could he have it all? The love of his son and the love of Belle? The Swan had implied as much.

So he inhaled the scent of the woman in his arms. Her hair, silky against his face, mingled with his own and for a moment he felt twined with her still, as they had been physically less than an hour gone past. Foolish though it seemed, Rumple committed this moment to memory to savor it later. Somehow, he hoped against hope that if the memory proved solid enough, he might be able to retrieve it someday. Silly he knew, but this was a night for hopes, for dreams, and for the first time in three hundred years, Rumple's heart did hope.

What might this future be like? Would Bae have a family of his own? Would Belle consider marrying him? Long shot indeed, that one, but why not? She was asleep beside him and could not dash his unspoken fantasies to ash from her slumber. No, she could do that in the future if she chose, but perhaps, just maybe, he could love her well enough that it could be their fantasy and not just his alone. He imagined flowers in her hair. His scales would glimmer in the sunlight where they were not covered by his court dress. He would garb her in the softest silk he could conjure and- why wait for an imagined future for that?

He lifted his hand slowly from her back, not wanting to wake her, and made a minimal flicking gesture at their bodies. He had begun to notice the slight chill in the air anyway, best not to let her wake naked and cold. So he clad them both in filmy night clothes, smooth as could be.

He drifted back into that sunlit meadow where he would marry Belle with his son standing beside him. All around, the cotton woods left a blanket of their downy snow over the blooming wild flowers and the breeze swirled the white puffs around them as they made their vows. He would love her, forever. This was true even though neither would even remember this night.

But it would work. They had succeeded in protecting this future of which Rumple now daydreamed.

Rumplestiltskin's eyes snapped open.

How had he not seen this before?

It would not work. It could not. He had still been in Belle's body on the other side of the transport. There was no space in time for him to leave between the casting and the launch of the spell. And he had not truly proved anything in that experiment after all because the transport was a spell he had cast in the first place. Of course he could use the wand to cast it from the vantage of another body. It was still him doing the casting. 

They were back to square one. Worse than square one really, because Rumple had proven to himself that their only option could not work. Unless either the Swan or her pirate had magic themselves. Which he doubted. 

Now he could not send them back even if they could make sufficient repairs to the timeline. He would never see his son again. Even though he might get to spend the intervening time- the rest of her life even- with Belle, that loss seized him in an icy fist and squeezed. For a moment he could not draw breath.

At least Belle slept on, unaware for now, of this fresh torment. There were hot tears in her hair.

But anger surged to life in Rumple and squashed the despair with determination. There had to be a way. Something to keep the timeline intact. He needed to spin.

As gently as he could, Rumple disentangled himself from his love and reappeared in the great hall. He did not sit to spin immediately though; he paced. He threw a fireball into the hearth instead of bothering with a more gentle ignition spell. The candelabra flared to life, swaying with the excessive force of similarly ill-proportioned magical mistreatment. Neither assuaged his anguish nor tempered his fury.

He spent at least a good hour wearing out the carpet in orbit of his table before he stopped in front of the wheel. No solutions had appeared.

What would he tell Belle? His hopes were dashed, obliterated really. Trapped here in the wrong time, the pirate and the Swan would continue to throw the future further into disarray even if he proceeded with the curse. The likelihood that he would even be successful in getting Regina to cast the curse dwindled before his eyes. The two invaders, even if they had been ignorant of his plans, would be busy making subtle changes to the course of events which would undoubtedly result in catastrophic ripples. And if the curse took the adult version of the Savior? Would there be two Saviors then, in the future when the curse broke?

Nothing good could come of this. Nothing. The extent of the cataclysm caused by their pollution of the timeline detonated in his mind. A million directions, a billion tiny things that could mean he never saw Baelfire again, that the curse never broke, that...

Rumple stopped himself there and sat down to spin. He needed to focus on solutions, not the apocalyptic magnitude of his eviscerated plans.

Within seconds, slick gold fed through his fingers to coil in the bowl at his feet. His breathing slowed down and his thoughts with it. Neutralize threats. Remove obstacles. Plan meticulously. Rumplestiltskin excelled at these things after three hundred years of practice. There had to be a way.

It must have been her influence, the solution obvious but Rumple had been resisting it since he began pacing. Only the act of spinning, after having exhausted all other avenues, had allowed it to surface and form fully in his mind.

Rumplestiltskin's stomach clenched and roiled. This new plan would require him to deceive her, which he found repugnant. Since when had the greatest of the Dark Ones ever worried about a little bit of misdirection, trickery? Such moral issues had not plagued him in years. Everything he did, every plan he made, every breath he took was in service of finding Baelfire and Rumple would stop at nothing in order to eventually keep that now ancient deal. Only True Love could make him hesitate now. And he did know it was True Love. He could not tell her that, of course, because he could not pain her by knowing, only to then have to forget him.

His chest tightened at the thought that he could not tell her. More so about withholding that truth than over what he was about to do. He knew this would protect her and the timeline, but she would not approve. She would want him to be better than this.

But he could not be what she wanted.

He also knew that he could not spend whatever time they had left here in the Dark Castle with her and no distraction to keep him from confessing the whole thing. She would pick up on whatever was bothering him and he had not the strength to keep it from her. A distraction was precisely what was needed.

He could not just take her to a pub, or a palace for that matter, and show the lady a good time like any other suitor would do because doing so would damage the timeline. If not for the that, he would have taken her to the nearest shore and set sail on a galleon made of his own magic. He would show her the world, like she always wanted. But it would not matter how far away he took her, any introduction of their presence would change things.

Then it hit him. The Lost Coast. He had visited in search of a crystal that grew only within the toxic forest covering the island. The forest emitted a pollen so vile that no human could breathe it and survive.

Being the Dark One did have its perks. Ignoring mortal perils continued to make him smile even all these years later. Some pleasures just never wore off. It would be simple to ensure that the pollen would not trouble Belle, he had of course made the realm's only existing antidote, knowledge he kept to himself. Why share, after all? No need to give anyone else access to the crystals. And Belle would have no way of remembering about the Lost Coast anyway.

He would dose her in their morning tea leaving her none the wiser. No doubt she would find the crystals beautiful and enjoy the diversion. 

They could have their privacy and a distraction without any risk to the timeline at all. Perfect.

Rumple dropped his spinning where he had left off. He had a memory potion to make and some slight of hand to arrange. It took him less than an hour, at which point he went back to his lady, secure in his plans once again.

Rumple passed the rest of the night agreeably engaged. He learned Belle's sleep cycles, guessed at when she might be dreaming and discerned that when on her back, Belle snored ever so softly. He would never tell her of her rather impressive flatulence. Of course he would just discover it all over again when next they were together sometime in the distant future. Would he tell her then? Perhaps when she grew very old indeed and such matters would be more laugh than mortification.

The sun still crept early from its bed in the late summer and birdsong began even before that. His sleeping maid did not stir until the light touched her face, though he wished he could have observed her in this morning light a little longer undisturbed. The first signs of her wakefulness were little adjustments she made snuggling closer to his warmth, curling herself in tighter.

Rumple forced himself not to interrupt the process as it unfolded before him. He did not want to miss this chance to know how Belle woke herself in the morning. With great restraint, he did not stroke her hair or press kisses into her furrowing brow as she snuggled into his chest before relaxing again. His voyeurism ended suddenly though, when she shifted and then opened her eyes.

It took only a moment for her to crane her neck to meet his gaze with her sleepy blue one.

Rumplestiltskin did not break the silence though, preferring to give her a small, warm smile and enjoy the intense eye contact. And she gazed at him a good while before finally speaking.

"Hi," she whispered with a sleep roughened voice.

"Good morning, sweetheart," he murmured in reply. Then he indulged his earlier instincts to nuzzle and kiss her as he drew her properly against his body. Belle laced her limbs easily with his and they melded together under the morning-warm covers.

They made love slowly, sweetly, indulgently. Slick sounds and soft moans filled the room as he joined them and they rocked gently together until nature took over and they sought the required rhythm for mutual satisfaction.

Later, when he could bring himself to break the quiet of their contentment, he whispered in her ear, "I could get used to this."

"We will," she assured him, stroking his curls, "the Swan knows we are together in the future."

Belle did not need to know why Rumple took a long, slow and deep breath before answering her, "While you were sleeping I planned a surprise for you. Shall we break our fast and then seek it out?"

Belle pulled her head from where it had been buried in his shoulder so she could beam at him, "A surprise, Rumple? By all means, why didn't you say so?"

He chuckled at her, "Obvious reasons, I'd say."

Her smile transformed into a smirk, "I suppose so."

Rumple took the trouble of preparing their tea himself, a sweet gesture as much as a convenient excuse to ensure Belle's safety on their trip without her foreknowledge.

He gave her a knowing, if impish, leer, "Now, my dear, prepare yourself. I have found a way to give you what you most desire."

With a flourish and a snap, a picnic basket and some sundries in a pack appeared on the kitchen table. He could not contain his mischievous grin as he bestowed the basket on her arm. He shouldered the pack himself.

Rumplestiltskin inclined himself to her slightly, offering his arm, "Are you ready, my dear?"

"I am." Belle announced decidedly and took his proffered arm firmly in hand.

A deep breath and a lingering look later, Rumple gestured between them to transport them halfway across the realm.

They reappeared on a beach.

Never one to miss an opportunity for drama, Rumple ensured they would be facing out to sea upon their arrival. A smile grew on his face as Belle's expression transitioned from disbelief to wonder. Without sea life near the coast, the clarity of the water allowed the amethyst sand to turn it a entrancing purple mixed with the omni-blue reflection of the sky. Nowhere in all of his travels had he seen the like.

The tidal action wore the crystals eventually into the sand they stood on, but several smooth boulders sized crystals dotted the beach, eroded to roundness by the eons. Where they stood on this side of the island, a sand beach stretched around the curve of the land. But on the other side of the island, a crystalline pebble beach gave the feeling of walking on thousands of worn-smooth gems. He would take her there for sunset.

Unless those damned annoyances from the future interfered beforehand.

He would not think of them unduly. He would not, there was no need. He had enchanted his viewing sphere to alert him when they returned to his castle. No need to dwell on those meddling mosquitos. No need.

Belle had not said a word in fully five minutes and he just watched her gawking. Yes, this distraction would protect their future perfectly.

At last she turned to say something to him, but something caught her eye. Oh yes, that.

Her head jerked suddenly toward the land and then she spun her whole body to face it. Her mouth hung adorably slack.

The twisting and knotted growth of the trees would have been enough of a wonder for this one island all by itself. In fact the noxious trees tangled themselves so tightly at their canopy tops that nearly no light penetrated the branches and foliage to the forest floor. The forest's edge looked more like the opening to a vast cave than that of any forest fence she might have previously seen. 

Enormous purple crystals sprouted all along the edge of the beach with the great branches of the tangled trees reaching for them. Storms left the beachhead littered with huge crystal shards like drift wood, drift logs really. Through the gaps in the massive crystal facade, darkness reigned with surprisingly sparse tree trunk pillars supporting the massive and dense tree ceiling.

And still yet, the flora were not the most amazing feature to behold, nor even the crystals at the beachhead. In great monolithic spires, purple crystals broader than the trunks of the trees jutted from the earth. It was they that refracted the only light to penetrate the opaque tree canopy. The crystals, when grown tall enough, pierced the forest ceiling to soar skyward. 

The trees however, were not so easily defeated. The tops of the crystals all showed evidence of violent breaking for indeed, the trees themselves strangled the crystals in an ever lasting struggle. The nearest spire already showed evidence of deep fault lines in its surface from the pressure of the choking branches which would eventually snap off its top. In turn, when the top of the spire crashed to the forest floor, it ripped the branches away with it to leave a gaping hole, if temporary, in the canopy. And so, the crystal would continue its growth briefly undeterred until the forest closed in around it once again.

"Rumple, there's no birdsong. I don't hear any birds."

"What?" Surprised he pulled his own gaze away from the spectacle. "I bring you hear and you miss the birds?"

Her look of wonder tensed into consternation then exasperation, "No, Rumple. This-" she stopped with her mouth working to find the words, "I don't even know where to begin. The sheer magnitude of this place. Well I had to start understanding somewhere. Why not with birds?"

"You're not-you don't like it then? I had not thought of where else we might go."

She landed on him, lips pressed to his and he stumbled to keep them both upright. Their supplies for the day landed in a heap at their feet. When she had finished with him she said, "Rumple! You are the great and terrible Dark One but you are more fragile than a dry twig. Of course I like it!

"Oh, of course. I see. I just couldn't tell, is all."

Smiling and laughing she took his face between her hands, "You are unbelievable! Are you going to tell me about this place or not?"

He did not oblige her just then, instead he kissed her himself. Rumple poured his relief, his desire, and his own wonder at her into the kiss. Warmth suffused him and the ocean breeze ruffled his hair moderating the otherwise intense afternoon heat of the late summer day. Belle melded their bodies together wrapping around him as he did around her. If there had ever been a more romantic moment in his life, Rumplestiltskin did not know of it.

The wind moaned around the curves of the island, almost as if someone blew over the end of a glass bottle. The varying tones left a surreal music floating in the air around them.

At some point, they stopped kissing to just hold one another and rock slowly together.

Just loudly enough to be heard over the wind, Rumple whispered into Belle's ear, "No dearie, I won't tell you about this island. I will show it to you."

She pulled her face from his hair and gave him a watery smile, which was the first hint that she had been crying. Wordlessly, he thumbed the tears from her cheeks. He took her hand and led her up the beach.

"I could not have taken you to any peopled shore, or even the town nearest the Dark Castle, you know. But here, there are no people, no animals, no fishes, no insects, but definitely not nothing." Rumple belied his earlier refusal to narrate. His little maid beamed at him, so he continued, "I am the only living fauna to set foot on these shores that I know of in at least as long as I have been the Dark One. Until today."

"But why?" Of the myriad things to love about this woman, her curiosity thrilled him. Her sparkle, her joy at the world around her was infectious.

Rumple laughed with genuineness he could not recall feeling, perhaps ever. He stopped her and nuzzled the tip of her nose with his own before chiding her kindly, "Why, why, why? Have patience my impetuous little maid!"

"Did I interfere with your flow, Rumple?" Now she teased him.

"Yes you did. And a bookworm ought to know better!" He trilled and giggled as his hands fluttered in unrestrained glee. "The answer, I am afraid you may not like, but you shall have it anyway. It's the jealousy of the trees, you see. They guard their treasured island with more righteousness than any dragon. It's a toxin, you see, in their pollen. It is deadly to all forms of life but themselves. And the crystals. Though if the crystals are alive or not, I cannot say. They are a mystery even I cannot explain."

"The trees are aware beings?"

"Perhaps. I'm not certain. Aware might not be the word for it, but it would be best not to wake them lest they take exception to our romantic stroll."

"But the pollen, it isn't toxic to us?" Belle squirmed unconsciously and rubbed at the back of a hand.

"Most certainly! But I took care of that in our tea this morning. I thought you would prefer the surprise to my telling you you needed to drink the antidote to the most powerful poison in any realm I have ever run across."

Belle stopped walking to face him, eyes huge, "And you are so certain of this antidote?" He nodded. "How did you come here in the first place?"

"Let's just say, it was uncomfortable." Rumple enunciated each syllable for maximum dramatic effect. "Being the Dark One and immortal does have its benefits." Rumple drew a finger across her cheek to clear it of some blowing strands of her hair, "You needn't worry, my dear. I protect what is precious to me."

"And I am precious to you?"

"Most definitely." He darted in for a brief but succinct kiss, "Now come on, there is so much to see."

They left their supplies at the beachhead to venture closer to the midnight gloom of the forest floor. Climbing over the slick fallen crystals required great care Belle and Rumple helped each other while avoiding the jagged edges of the more freshly fractured pieces. If not for the continuously moaning wind cooling them, the crystals would have been too hot from the sun for them to even touch, let alone traverse. Even with their great care and slow going, the hem of Belle's dress had shredded to ribbons in places by the time they had scaled the last of the fallen crystals at the edge of the forest maw.

For that was what it was, now, up close. A gaping maw of darkness where within the purple crystals glowed and scattered nigh unnatural light around the thick trunks, some as large around as the modest peasant hut he had shared with Baelfire all those years ago.

"Here we go no further." Rumple restrained her arm as she moved to descend to the forest floor. "We cannot disturb the forest, or rather you cannot, because you are mortal and it will eat you. I cannot die in this manner, but I am not certain I could save you from being thusly digested."

As their eyes adjusted to the dimness after the brilliance of the beach, it was clear when Belle spotted the bones. Huge bones. No intact carcasses, but scattered remnants of creatures of a size enough to dwarf a sailing ship.

Belle scooted back against him.

"The trees enjoy fishing. Their roots go out for miles under the ocean. As near as I can figure, they digest any creatures that come within reach, or would dare to crawl along the ocean floor. It seems, though I have never witnessed it personally, that the roots drag whales down to their doom, envelop them under the sand and then, well, you can see."

"So why only here? Are their other islands connected to this one? Wouldn't such an aggressive predator spread over the world, precluding, well, everything else?"

"An apt question," he responded thoughtfully. "I suspect it has to do with the crystal sand. I am guessing only at this point, but about five miles out to sea, the ocean is as normal with sea life aplenty. The ocean currents likely contain the spread of the sand and thus the reach of this forest is limited by its crystalline host island. I have named this place the Lost Coast because anything that dares come too close is lost. Unless they are me, or as with today, you."

"The Lost Coast. You would name something so beautiful so bleakly."

"That is the thing about beauty, though, isn't it? Beautiful is rare and can cut the unwary to the quick." Rumple sighed as he lost himself momentarily in the purple reflecting in her eyes. He murmured, trailing off: "Indeed, the unwary are lost with all hands."

Belle had her gaze directed into the heart of the woods though, squinting to see the glow of far off crystals. In the distance, they looked more like stars in a night sky than the verticals shafts they were up close. And of course the light refracted everywhere including through the fallen hunks of crystal on the forest floor. 

"We should begin our walk. I want to reach the other side of the island before sunset. We cannot be here so close to the trees even close to sunset because we will be noticed for sure if we aren't careful."

By the time they had climbed over the veritable boulder field of crystal fragments at the beachhead, the sun had begun to make its noticeable descent toward the western horizon. A little way down the beach, safely away from the trees and their creeping surface roots, Rumple gave Belle a water flask of her own and they set off.

"I can't help but feel that the forest must be lonely out here, only ever consuming the unfortunate beings to cross its path," Belle mused.

"You are peculiar, you know that." Rumple gave her chiding frown, "Do you think all things, at the height of their evil, have motivations aside from wanton destruction in service to their aims? There is no creature I know of more evil and cruel than this forest. As far as I am aware, the Dark One is next on that illustrious list and even I make deals."

"And why do you presume that because a creature has darkness within it, that it is evil?" Belle arched a challenging eyebrow at him.

"You saw the bones, not even a single shellfish or insect to be found. This darkness extinguishes, devours, all life. The very air is clogged with a toxin so vile no ship can approach. This is the darkest heart of the realm. Where do you think my viewing sphere came from? The enchantment to allow me to invade the privacy of any place in this realm and many others I know of had to come from a place of incredible darkness."

"You have not answered my question, Rumple." Belle's voice was gentle, but persistent, "The nature of all creatures is to survive. This creature, this forest, is utterly alone out here, wherever we are. It eats to stay alive, like all of us do. Do you purpose to tell me that, when looking upon its underbelly and seeing a protected darkness, that my insides look different, or yours? Our skin protects us from what does not belong there and whatever enters our mouth, we tend to eat. How is this creature different?"

"While we are on the subject of presumptions, you assume that because a creature is alone, it is lonely. You have no evidence for this."

"I concede that point, but any man would be lonely." Belle was looking at him now, not toward the beachhead and its snaggle-toothed orifices.

"I am not a man."

"But you were, you have told me you have a son."

"This forest has no son, has no children, cannot ever leave these shores. I don't see the point of comparison." If he spoke sharply it was only because he felt needled by her inquiry. "It may or may not even be aware of itself. A question I am not brave enough to attempt to answer with your tender flesh so near at hand." He snapped his teeth at her.

She gave him a patient, knowing smile and turned her attention back to the wonders around her.

It took the better part of two hours to reach the first stream in the delta which separated this sand beach from the pebble beach just out of sight beyond the low peninsula on the far side of the delta. He had timed it perfectly.

None of the streams were deep or swift so he and Belle waded and splashed each other like children as they meandered across.

Just as they rounded the tip of the peninsula, the sun had sunk to the ideal height.

Rumple had been focusing on his footing as they traversed the cobble-like purple beach, but her gasp brought him up short and then brought him a smile of deep satisfaction.

Belle stood agape staring ahead of them at the broad gently sloping beach. It was awash in glowing orbs of varying sizes caught to purplish fire by the setting sun.

Rumple did not look at the beach though, he looked at Belle. The fiery light bathed her face in sunset and all he could do was keep looking.

"Oh," she whispered, "Oh Rumple."

The sun scattered its light through a thousand at least boulder sized crystals arcing crazily through each and every facet and crack. The whole beach glittered like an enormous geode.

Neither Belle nor Rumple moved as bright scintillating faded to a dulcet glow with the extreme angle of the sun. Only after the sun dipped below the sea did Belle turn to look at him. When her fingers came away wet from his smiling cheeks, he realized that he, like her, had wept for this, for them.

The stars blinked awake in the velvety blue above them as Belle and Rumple had what would have been a midday meal in the Dark Castle on the flat top of a huge crystal worn round and soft by the ocean and time.

After whispering and cuddling quieted into kisses and caresses, the sun warmed crystal beneath them kept their naked bodies warm as they loved one another.

Moonrise brought a new and magnificent wash of shimmering color to the crystal beach. Rumple held her against his chest as he sat cross legged with her before him. She leaned easily against him with his arms wrapped around her belly. They had not spoken for some time and their only communication their fingers against skin or his lips on her neck.

He loved her. He wanted to tell her, to say those words aloud and make the beach and forest hear them. To demand that the moon and the night sky take notice that Rumplestiltskin, Dark One, loved. He truly loved.

But he could not say it. He could not do that to her. He could not tell her of their True Love only to rip it away from her. From them both.

So they sat in silence. The crystal radiating its heat kept their bare bodies from any chill the now gentle breeze might have offered them and they watched the night.

Rumple knew why neither of them were speaking. Like him, Belle wanted to stretch this moment as long as possible.

The moon had passed overhead to begin its descent behind them when it happened.

They both startled at a sudden clattering against their crystal. Belle clutched him in fear until he recovered and soothed her, "It is only the viewing sphere alerting me to what we knew was coming. He reached for the sphere in his pack and brought it around for both of them to see.

The unwelcome sight of a grimy pirate and a sweating Swan trudging up his mountain trail greeted them. He hastily put it away.

After squeezing her to him, he sighed, "Sweetheart, we have about two hours before they reach the Dark Castle."

He could tell she was trying not to cry. So was he.

"Rumple, we WILL love in the future."

"Yes, we will," Rumple promised her, and he promised the cosmos above them a bloody retribution should anything go awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hear ye, hear ye! Up 'til now this has been mostly on the fluffy side of things. Angst lies ahead. You have been warned.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst Warning: buckle up. If you're sensitive, proceed at your own risk.

Rumple clutched Belle and she him for long moments while they listened to the surf and neither of them said what they did not wanted to hear or acknowledge.

But this moment, like all moments especially the good ones, did come to an end. He squeezed her tightly in his arms and then whispered, "We must."

Wet but strong eyes met his and she nodded.

When the red smoke cleared from their vision, they were dressed and standing in the Dark Castle in the late afternoon. Belle did not look at him until he spoke to her.

"I have to restore the castle to as it was before they arrived. But would you like tea? Or?" He left her the option, he could grant her that much.

"Tea, I think, Rumple. Thank you." The words might have been stiff by themselves, but the tenderness of the past few days underpinned them and Rumple knew Belle was putting on a strong face for both of their sakes.

"In an hour, there will be tea in your library for you. I shan't be able to join you, unfortunately, as I must see our guests on their way. The weather is fine, perhaps a walk in the gardens while I am occupied? Just-" Rumple faltered, his tight throat all but denying him the words, "just mind the time, would you?"

His eyes stung and his skin felt a size too small. Belle stared at him and then took a visible deep breath, "I will do as you ask, Rumple. I trust you."

She could not have stabbed him more thoroughly with his own dagger. Of course she trusted him, she did not know the real plan. But no flinching. He could not pull back from this, no matter the cost in the mean time.

She must have taken his non-response as evidence that his struggle echoed her own in this moment, which after a fashion, it did, for she closed the small distance between them and caught his lips gently with her own. Rumple had only time enough to close his eyes before her lips were gone and her footsteps tapped on the stone hallway leading toward the gardens.

The wet sounds that drifted back along the corridor to him were more than he could bear, so he fled the room.

He raced to the great room first. With great care he replaced each item from their research back where it had been before the arrival of their unwelcome guests. He repaired the claw marks in the table. Each book he returned to its former home in her library. He cleaned a certain rug. He retraced their steps through the Dark Castle one room at a time scouring them for all the evidence of their love.

It felt like he was ripping her heart from her chest. Milah's last moments flashed through his mind. He coughed in a strangled throat as he approached their room. Eyes closed, he snapped his fingers.

The actual effort of magic required to decimate, obliterate really, the last vestiges of softness, of warmth, solace and caring did not match the emotional magnitude of the action. Not even close. Powerful as he was, Rumple barely had to register the thought to make it happen. He had used the snap to make it real for himself, to stretch out the moment to the duration of that brief sound as it bounced off the walls. 

It felt wrong that destruction was so effortless when what he and Belle had created together would take a curse of epic proportion to realize again in the future.

His face felt hot and sticky in direct contrast to the stone floor beneath his hands and knees. When Rumple opened his eyes, the sight of a wet puddle of tears greeted him. He hoped he had not been loud enough for her to hear in her library one wing over, but he could not have said. Before him, a smooth stone wall with the innocence of inanimacy provided no comfort, no assurance that this was worth it, that it was the right choice.

It was the only choice.

He swiped a hand over his unsightly face and then cleaned himself up with magic. The cockroaches had just passed through the outer wards. By now, she would not remember. Very soon, neither would he.

Why did this feel so much like losing Baelfire? It had to be the right thing to do. It was, regardless, the only path forward.

At least there would be some satisfaction to be had, though he would only know of it for approximately the next ten minutes.

Rumple and his mock research set-up on the table in his great hall appeared together in a puff of red smoke. He waited.

Without so much as a knock, the beetles scurried up to his table demanding a miracle.

Their expectant faces were all it took. All guilt over their grueling fate in his vault disappeared. Why should he feel guilty that he could not clean up their mess? With a vicious clack of his fingers he sent the sniveling roaches and their baggage to their doom. He would collect the dark fairy wand, probably gripped in a skeletal hand, next time he found some trinket deserving of such storage.

He set the memory potion in front of him on the table. Such a small thing. A bit of clear liquid and this would all be over. Everything would return to normal. And Belle would be nothing but his maid. Well, nothing but the maid he uselessly pined for.

Telling himself she had already forgotten him, he reached for the vial.

A blast of magic rocked the castle and Rumple sat up abruptly seizing the little vial in his fist. He appeared in his vault in front of the time portal before any conscious thought reached his mind.

He seized the Swan, "My son, what happens when I find him? Does he forgive me?"

"Yes."

"Yes but what?"

"He dies. He forgives you, he loved you. I loved him to! He died a hero, you can't take that away from him! You could make it worse if you try. You have to drink the potion," she implored trying to wrench free of him.

He took a breath, made a decision and tossed the tear-damp Swan away through the portal. Rumple drained the vial in one gulp and-

"What the hell am I doing in here?"

Rumple reappeared in his tower laboratory. The dark faery wand was warm in his hands and not from his own body heat. Curious. With a wave, the wall segment he used to keep prying eyes from his secrets dissolved and he replaced the wand on its rack next to the others.

But something caught his eye. The antidote potion for the toxin only produced on the island of the Lost Coast was half gone. It must have evaporated. Rumple made a mental note to make more. A trip back to the island presented no hardship after all. The stopper must have cracked, or had been ill fitting in the first place. Better care in future would be required.

As he was about to turn away, a bit of lacing caught his eye. There on the shelf next to his viewing orb was the lacing to a woman's bodice. He snatched it up and ran it through his fingers. Why did he have Belle's lacing hidden away with some of his most powerful trinkets?

He must be getting distracted, probably by her, for his mind to suffer such lapses.

His stomach rumbled. Tea time, or nearly. He would spin until Belle brought the tea.

In mid stride toward his wheel in the great room, Rumple stopped. A fine coating of dust covered the pedestal sporting that ridiculous excuse for a wizard's hat. That man had been a true disgrace to wizard kind. Seeing the fool's hat in his collection never failed to make Rumple smile. 

But why should it be dusty? Belle had dusted just yesterday, had she not?

No matter. Rumple spun and the shadows moved across the floor. Belle did not bring tea.

Hungry to the point of true grumpiness, Rumple tisk-ed aloud for his own benefit and then appeared in her library.

He strode toward the reading woman, with her own teacup empty beside her, he did not fail to notice. "How is it that you have made yourself tea, but completely omitted to make me mine? I believe the duties I set for you were fairly specific."

The little maid jerked from being startled out of her book. She shook her head and then picked up a card next to her tea things. He had thought she would simply mark her place and begin making excuses, but her hand with the card only got halfway to its destination before she stopped, staring at it.

Her face seemed to change from puzzled to bemused.

"Well, what is it? I haven't got all day."

"It's just my bookmark. This is your handwriting is it not?" Belle extended the elegant calling card toward him and he closed the distance between them to take it from her. She continued, "Who do you trust, Rumple?"

Sure enough, there on the stark white card were the words, plain and simple in his own hand, "I trust you."

"No idea. Can't recall. This must be ancient indeed because I don't trust anyone. Most especially not you to make my tea, per our agreement. These books have rotted away your sense of time."

Rumple handed the card back to her and disappeared. 

Back in the great hall, he snapped and steaming tea appeared in his chipped cup, along with the tea cakes he wanted. Belle more often favored small sandwiches with tea over the sweets he preferred. She would be along shortly with those and more tea anyway, he was sure.

Rumple tapped an impatient digit against the side of his teacup and then stopped abruptly. No satisfying ting-ting-ting had the porcelain emitted. Instead, there was a dull, soft tapping. At this surprising turn of events, Rumple looked down at his hand to discover two of his fingers ending in soft skin with a close cut nail instead of his normal claws. The nail-bed looked decidedly odd bereft of its usual appearance, denuded. 

He held his hands up side by side for comparison. He was still staring back and forth between them when Belle arrived with the tea service.

XXX

The Dark Castle was quiet. Even a season later- in high summer- Rumple found himself beginning to call for his tea or opening his mouth as he entered her library to demand something only to then snap his jaws shut with a click because no one would answer. His boots echoed and his wheel creaked, but her voice did not read to him. Her eyes did not flash when meeting his by chance as he turned a corner. And no casual touches to his arm praised his wit when he quipped and flourished.

For he had no reason to quip or flourish with her gone.

Deals came and they went and the Dark Castle sat heavy on its mountain like the stone edifice it was: hollow, empty and alone.

In the first days after her departure, Rumple had held on with stubbornness to his last words to her. He did not want her anymore, his power was far more important.

But as the months passed, her words burrowed into him like a parasite, sucking his life essence away bit by bit. So entrenched was she within him that he had to put her chipped cup away on a shelf so he would not see it every day, would not be tempted to use it. Would not hold it and gaze at it. Would not miss her.

But it had not worked. His plans sprouted from the seeds he had planted and day by day he inched closer to his aims, to Baelfire. No one who asked him for a deal seemed to notice if he was more morose and snappish than usual, why would they? Rumplestiltskin, Dark One, snapped at everyone, a foul temper was to be expected.

In the most dreadfully silent moments, when his spinning wheel had stopped and he was remembering instead of forgetting, occasional wetness dribbled down his cheek. This was very nearly one of those days, or it would have been if not for the rude interruption of his ex-student.

"Flimsy locks, Rumple." Regina breezed into his great hall as if she still had any right to make herself at home there.

"I'm not dealing today." That should have been enough.

"Oh you will want to make this deal, Rumple. You have something I need and I am willing to pay dearly for it."

"I doubt it on both fronts." Rumple grumbled, but he turned away from his wheel to find she had had the audacity to pour her self a cup of tea.

"I want Pandora's box."

Rumple halted in mid stride and yanked his head up to stare at her squarely, he hedged, "You assume I have it."

"I know you do, Rumple, I am an efficient snoop."

"That you are," he agreed, "Very well, why do you want it?"

Regina flicked her long black hair over her shoulder with a dramatic frown, "Let's just say I need someone out of the way while I deal with Snow White."

"And who might that someone be?"

"My business."

"Very well," Rumple mused, feeling suddenly more awake than he had in nearly four months. This might be the first tender shoot surging out of the soil. She would eventually cast his curse. This could be it. "What are you offering?"

"Something extremely valuable which I do not offer lightly. I know the worth of that box." She sidled up to him until they were nearly nose to nose. "I am offering an honest answer to one question sometime in the future. I will answer truthfully and completely, about anything, one question. I know you will appreciate how extraordinary this is."

He did. In fact, Rumple did not say anything to her for long moments. There could be any number of tight spots between now and the curse, or even after its breaking in which this could be a key to finding his son. This could be the linchpin to everything.

Rumple put out his hand and summoned Pandora's Box to his palm. "Very well, on one condition, you may never place me in this box. Ever."

"Deal!" Regina snatched the box from his fingers and flashed him with a dazzlingly evil smile. She whirled away from him, stalking toward the door, and traced her fingers across the surface of his table. "The place is looking dusty, Rumple. You should get a new girl, but you can rest assured I had nothing to do with that tragedy."

"What. Tragedy."

"You don't know?" Regina turned around to face him again and leaned a hand on the table top. Taking on a casually narrative tone, Regina continued, "Verna, was it? After you-"

"Belle, her name is Belle." Rumple heard the warmth in his voice in spite of his efforts to conceal it.

"Fine, Belle then. After you raped Belle and threw her out like garbage-"

If Regina found her neck pinned between his squeezing hand and the pillar across the room, Rumple surely could not be blamed for the outcome. "I did no such thing! Why would you think that? Who told you that?"

In a strangled but oddly calm voice, Regina croaked, "Would you like to use your one question now? Or take what I was freely offering?"

Rumple let her go.

Regina pushed passed him, refreshed her tea and took several sips before she continued. "You can lie to me if you want Rumple, but it doesn't change what you did to her. As I was saying, after you took what you wanted, wiped her memory and cast her aside, she arrived at her father's door pregnant."

"I did not-." Rumple began in a growl, interjecting again and unable to let that foulness stand, but then Regina's last sentence registered in his mind. Shocked, he spat out, "She was pregnant?"

"Oh yes, she was beyond hiding by that time, rounded up like a little peach. Poor girl. Anyway, her father took one look at her, did not believe her when she said it wasn't you. So pitiful! She claimed she didn't know who or how it had happened. She said she had no memory of the act at all! Who else could accomplish that? Her father is no fool and neither am I Rumple, so don't bother giving me that look or lying to me about it."

"No Regina! I cannot let this stand. I could not have sired a child on Belle because I never touched her in that manner! Never!" Rumple blasted his righteous fury against her accusations. Pain and wetness in his palms alerted him to the fact that his own claws were cutting him as he clenched his fists. "We have known each other a very long time. When have you ever even heard tell I did something like that? Never!"

"My guess?" Regina continued unperturbed, "you have been much more discrete in the past. You probably have bastards stretching back hundreds of years. After all, you just find a newly married couple, drug them both, get what you want and no one is the wiser because everyone expects the outcome. You got sloppy. But you don't have anything to worry about this time."

"What?!" Killing her would do no good, Rumple told himself. Sweat had soaked through under his arms and it was beginning to bead up at his hairline. His blood raged in his ears and his vision blurred. Regina was inches from a very messy death and she did not seem even to notice. A slender thread, Baelfire, kept him from simply extinguishing her on the spot.

"Clearly defiled by you and carrying your evil spawn, her father ignored her pleas and banished her to the clerics for cleansing. You know how they can be. I doubt the brat survived the first night, but Belle herself lasted a little longer. Eventually it was too much for the poor, sweet princess and she threw herself off the tower. She died."

Rumple could not draw breath and he felt his magic sweep in to keep him alive. He stood their, not breathing as the silence stretched. He said nothing. Belle was dead.

"So you did care for the girl, in some small way at least. Not enough to keep your, well, your parts to yourself, but clearly she mattered to you. I have been most generous in telling you this. I didn't have to and I won't count any of what you just asked me as fulfillment of our deal. I keep my bargains." Her enjoyment of his pain seemingly spent, she murmured, "I truly did not see this coming from you, Rumple. I never thought you were the type. I'd not have been your student otherwise."

"Regina," Rumple ground out through creaking teeth, "someone clearly violated Belle, but it was. Not. Me."

"You forget Rumple, I know how accomplished a liar you are and I will not be falling for it today. Tears or no. Who else would have access to a memory potion that effective? Pregnancy has a fairly specific start point and she was with you at that time." Regina tossed Pandora's Box up, then caught it, "Well, Rumple, I look forward to the conclusion of our deal. When you decide to ask me something, you know how to reach me."

Regina was out the door and gone before Rumple could draw another breath to argue and protest his innocence.

The Dark Castle was no longer silent. Whether great wracking sobs echoed down the hallways or whether quiet snuffling crept into the cracks of his lab's stone walls, the Dark Castle did not fall quiet again for weeks on end.

Rumple found himself in odd places throughout the castle on an alarmingly regular and increasing, basis. With the singularity of encroaching madness, he focused everything on his plans to reunite with Baelfire. He thought only of holding his son in his arms, the way he smelled as a small child covered in mud after falling in the lane. When he reemerged from that memory, Rumple had somehow ended up in the dusty room which held Baelfire's clothing. The shawl was against his nose. 

The night of the first snow, he went to her library to sit by the fire and think of that frozen day he had learned of Baelfire's existence. With an idle swirl of his hand, a wispy bassinet appeared beside his chair and he let his hand rock it gently while his magic trickled into the self-created illusion. When he chanced to look over at it, he was shocked to see skirts standing beside its translucent wooden frame. His hand gripped the faux wood railing and he allowed his eyes to follow the skirts up to a bodice and then a face he knew well and had not seen in half a year. The face of a dead woman. Belle.

His mind had created her looking softly down into the bassinet. He ignored his choking, wet noises and damp face as he rose to stand behind her. Rumple wrapped his arms around his magic and buried his nose in her neck. But it was not quite right. He could not smell her, the illusion had no warmth, for all it felt like her solid body. A flicker of his eyelids and she felt warm and smelled of the lavender soap he had provided to her.

Rumple leaned on his magic and pretended it was her. The wetness leaking from his eyes and nose did slide off the surface of the magic instead of soaking in to fabric, but he could ignore that easily enough.

"I never deserved you," he told her specter-like shoulder. "Should never have asked for you as a price. You were right. I am a lonely man." He sniffed, "You were right about my empty heart as well, you know. I did stop denying it, eventually. And it might have even been in time to save you and your child, had I the courage to find you and bring you home. But I am a coward, Belle. Told myself you were better off without a monster and now I've taken this from you. I would have loved this child, been its father, no matter who sired it, because it was yours. If I hadn't thrown you out, it could have been mine, if you ever decided you wanted this with me. I am so sorry, Belle. I am so sorry. I loved you. I love you."

He rocked the dead woman's magical echo for a long moment, "I could have kept you and my power if I weren't so afraid. I should seek out the man who harmed you, kill him, and probably your father too. Definitely every last cleric in the land. Slow and grueling, roast them over spits, I think. I know you wouldn't want me to, though I would be doing the world a service. But it is too late now, I can't risk disrupting my plans now that I am so close. I have to find Baelfire. He's all I have left. Not that I deserve him either."

Rumple's bitter lament trailed off in tears.

Her form felt so solid, warm and real. Rumple's grip on his sanity had been slipping since her departure and it felt decidedly tenuous with the fire crackling, his eyes closed and holding the woman he loved. If he relaxed just a little, he could indulge his fantasy. This could be real enough for him.

The temptation to relinquish reality all together and live in a world populated by his own magic had never seemed so appealing.

As time passed, Rumple began using her soap himself rather than relying on magic for his bathing needs. But the scent of lavender and summer always seemed to fade, no matter how much he used. Every niche, every vase, every spare flask in his lab sported fresh or drying lavender, but he could not smell it anymore. He tucked it into pockets and up sleeves. Even magical amplification failed eventually. He simply could not smell it anymore, not even standing in a field of lavender in early summer. Time had even taken her scent from him.

It was after the lavender field incident that Rumple took up drinking again. Being the Dark One meant excessive drink could not harm him, but he had found the habit of chronic inebriation distasteful on account of his own father in the past. Now he just needed time to pass. If the edges were fuzzed, so much the better, these were not memories he cared for over much. 

As long as he could shepherd events into alignment, he saw no reason to pay any closer attention to the world. Yes, he was busy, but the acute suffering of each moment could be blessedly abated. To an extent. No one had even noticed his rather manic mannerisms. Rumplestiltskin's mental well-being concerned no one, of course.

 

Fall of that year finally brought Rumple's focus back to the world in sharper detail. Events he had been waiting for dropped abruptly into place. The heralds of the curse sounded with the explosion of Ella's faery godmother. He had been almost sober that evening for fear of making some kind of mistake.

That loud bang and flash of light actually proved to be the first memory in a great while he wanted to hang on to. Another dead faery, another step toward justice. He scooped up the wand off the paving stones with relish and, at long last, smiled with genuine pleasure as he turned a peasant into a princess.

Unfortunately for him, the price of magic was usually cruel. Yes she would pay, they had a deal, but he also paid. He paid because with the fog of drink beginning to lift, the weight of memory dropped on him like a wet blanket he could not shake. The specter of Belle began reappearing in quieter moments. He would hear a baby's cry from far off in the castle. The little laugh of a toddler would startle him as he spun at the wheel.

Rumple knew he did these things to himself. Sloppiness when using magic had not been an issue in centuries, but his wandering mind during a spell was not the same thing. And his augmented tea had nothing to do with it. Surely not. It must have been the nature of the deal which would lead to his imprisonment and to him being in place for the curse. Helping two people fall in love. Two more people. Who had he not helped fall in love in recent years? Oh yes, he and Belle. Not that he had not been thinking about her in the past year, quite the contrary, but being sauced most of the time had its advantages. More intermittent and controlled imbibing had decided downsides.

Rumple had known that sending Cinderella to the ball would lead to his imprisonment, but the how eluded him until their wedding day. Sober, if not sane, Rumple knew then, watching the dancers and waiting for his moment, what he wanted most for a price and what would cost the young royals enough to imprison him. He wanted their baby.

Ella had been willing to trade anything in the world for a chance, only a chance, at a change in social status. She had never met the prince, but she thought to snare him for her own betterment. That they appeared twooly in wuv, mere happenstance. A person so willing to use another as that had no business being a parent.

Not that Rumple fancied he did either, he had thrown away his own child, and then thrown away Belle as well, for power. He knew this. He would not keep the child for his own. No, Rumple would find a loving family, a deserving family, and do the child a favor after the curse was broken. But not before he could spend some time with it himself. 

There could be as much as a month between its birth and his finding a suitable situation during which Rumple could sooth his aching heart with the fantasy. He missed Baelfire so much and he knew it would take some time and planning to locate his son and then mount an expedition to find him. A blank slate to him, the land without magic could provide any number of unfortunate challenges to his plans. In the mean time, he would cuddle this child and think of Bae. And miss Belle. A solid plan.

Spring rolled in with the moment Rumple had been waiting for. When the princess lied to him about her twins and his flask hit the grass beside him, Rumple knew this was it. The way to finding his son had locked into place and all he had to do now was wait. And not tip Ella off too much. Still he could not resist playing with her desperation. 

Persistent, as he knew she would be, she thrust the scroll at him to sign. He did.

Rumple's heart thundered in his chest in elation as the faery magic seized him and cut him off from his power. Baelfire. He would see him again. He would. Success was only a matter of time now.

Charming and some dwarf he did not know shoved him unceremoniously into the cage.

"Ehhh-ck!" Charming wrinkled up his face and began dusting off his hands on his breeches. "Do you have some kind of infestation or something? You wreak!"

"What?" What was the prince going on about? Rumple regretted that his flask was no longer tucked up his sleeve. That had been a definite mistake.

"Lavender, man, you- the stench of you! I never thought lavender could be so unpleasant!" The prince's disgust did not interest Rumple.

"Oh that, I can't smell it anymore. But don't you worry, now that I am cut off from my magic-" Rumple mocked him with a flickering of his fingers, "-the scent will truly fade. It is an infestation of memory only. Nothing contagious, so put your mind at ease. I won't be infecting whatever prison you have in mind for me."

Rumple giggled loudly and the dwarf backed up further.

"Say, I dropped my flask in the grass over there, do you mind?" The flask would provide some small and temporary comfort.

"Not a chance." The prince really did consider himself quite smart.

"It's not a potion, it's whiskey. Smell it, try some yourself if you don't believe me." How unreasonable. Uncivilized even.

The dwarf wrinkled his nose in disdain and Charming rolled his eyes and went back to his preparations to leave.

Rumplestiltskin felt no sympathy at all for Ella when Thomas came up missing. None at all.

Alone in his sell deep under the castle, Rumple knew these were his last moments in this realm. He withdrew the length of lacing that had been in his pocket at the time of his capture. Of the many things he probably should regret, he only truly regretted the pain and suffering he caused Belle and having broken his promise to Baelfire. That was it.

The lace now no longer much resembled what it had when she had worn it. Discolored and frayed from months in this cell with no other comfort for his roiling mind, it had been his only solace. He had sung silly songs to the lace, wove it into patterns between his fingers, created elaborate knot work and sobbed into his hands as they held it whenever a guard had dozed off and it was safe to do so.

This evening, he guessed it was evening because several hours before they had brought him soup- if it could be called that- instead of bread and cheese or porridge, Rumple felt calm. His mind had settled into a peace he had not known in centuries and he sat in the middle of his cell just breathing deeply and evenly. Very soon he would have a nearly three decade respite from his memories before he could then assuage his battered heart and go find Baelfire. To apologize. To tell him he loved him. To beg forgiveness he did not deserve but craved anyway.

His guard had fled in a panic an hour ago, not much longer to wait now, and all he could do was smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! That took quite a bit of work. In case you were wondering, I am using an OUAT timeline to keep myself on track. I am trying to take as few liberties with it as possible and still make this story work. See you in Storybrooke next chapter.


	7. Chapter 7

"Emma." Mr. Gold hoped no one noticed how he clenched the wad of cash to keep his hand from trembling visibly. "What a lovely name. Enjoy your stay. Emma."

Mr. Gold made it to his car before Rumple sucked in a deep breath at the onslaught of memories. The cash fell to the floor at his feet from limp fingers as he sorted centuries' worth of sudden knowledge and emotion. At least Mr. Gold only had fifty odd years of his own fake memories to add to the tumult. It could have been much worse.

The early evening grey sky continued its darkening and the streetlights flicked on. Rumplestiltskin Gold sat there. A giggle sounded odd in Mr. Gold's throat and force of recent habit made it feel out of place. Like it or not, the Dark One he was had been altered, permanently, by Mr. Gold. 

Mr. Gold's bald sanity definitely figured into the plus column. When last Rumple had known himself in imp form, the term sane, broadly speaking, did not apply to him. This new settled mind made it easier to think. In the quiet, this mind could do all kinds of useful things. Mr. Gold was a shrewd, clean and organized thinker and an apt business man. A lawyer. Definitely an advantage. An efficient investigator and eavesdropper, Mr. Gold had acquired a veritable treasure trove of understanding about his neighbors, tenants and his fellow citizens of Storybrooke.

What a ridiculous name, rather juvenile considering Madame Mayor's other charming proclivities toward violence and revenge. She could have called it anything, Reginaton for example.

In the minus column, Mr. Gold, unfortunately, had been walking all day on his mangled ankle and said ankle did him the discourtesy of hurting abominably. The cane, at least, was a vast improvement over the walking stick he had used centuries ago. And the thought of the little bottle of pills in a cabinet in his house cheered him. That and the Scotch he was not supposed to combine them with. But rent day nearly always drove him down that path.

Rumple Gold laughed out loud at the memories of his monthly pain induced binge of Netflix and indulgence. What an odd realm. While Mr. Gold still preferred the written word over the miraculous moving pictures, their ingenuity did not escape Rumple. In fact, he was looking forward to investigating them afresh with his new vantage point as a centuries old being. 

Mr. Gold liked who-dun-its. They were tidy, orderly and controllable stories and Rumple could understand the safety in their predictability. There would be a murder, a heroic crime fighter, and a cleverly written investigation which would conclude with getting the bad guy and usually the girl, or occasionally the guy. Mr. Gold always figured out the bad guy before he was supposed to; it gave him a smug feeling of superiority. This preference fit into the grey-scale of Storybrooke's stagnant backwater mockery of human existence. Rumple would never watch another procedural drama as long as he lived. His Netflix profile was about to get an overhaul. 

Rumple thought about all the documentaries he had scrolled past. NatGeo might have something to offer him; he needed to learn about this world. And the comedy! Mr. Gold had fallen asleep on his only attempt to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Rumple planned to remedy this failing.

Speaking of miracles he could not have come close to imagining, he caressed the steering wheel of his car. Not having to walk home soothed his anxiety over his throbbing ankle, and he very much wanted to go home and be alone for awhile with his memories. He needed to plan.

Pink? Madame Mayor made his house pink? Salmon, Mr. Gold informed him. Rumple rubbed Mr. Gold's metaphorical nose in the formidable edifice that had been the Dark Castle. Regina had definitely been mocking him when she created this travesty of a color scheme. He would hire painters straight off. A dignified blue or grey would turn this house from laughing stock to elegant with very little expense.

But then Rumple reconsidered. If he started making drastic changes to his home, how long before Regina spotted the more subtle slips he was bound to make since he was no longer only Mr. Gold?

Fine, the paint job could wait. With Emma here, everything was now in motion and he could afford a little more patience. And a small measure of embarrassment.

He parked.

The entry to his home, he liked. The stained glass suited him as did the rich wood interior. His home being a hair's breadth shy of cluttered and also rather dusty, felt familiar, even if the immediately visible knickknacks came from a world not his own. His cane echoed on the hardwood as he let Mr. Gold perform his typical ritual of hanging up his coat and depositing his keys on the entry table. Mr. Gold did like his comforting little habits. Rumple had no objection, ritual had its purpose.

Rumple had to admit, the suit (Mr. Gold supplied the name for his ensemble) and overcoat were elegant, tasteful and gave him a sleek appearance. He supposed Regina thought to give him an antithetical style to his flamboyant leathers and silk from the Enchanted Forest. She certainly had not counted on his liking it. Fine soft wool, well tailored and perfectly fit to his body, the suit moved easily and, while obviously expensive, it felt livable, comfortable in a way his conceited style never had been.

Mr. Gold seemed to appreciate the memory of how he looked in that leather though. Well, so had he or he would not have spent so much time wearing it. He would find a way to work leather back into their life eventually, in some small way. He was certain it could be done without compromising their new style.

He followed Mr. Gold's urging toward the kitchen. There he found a good supply of loose leaf teas and a well appointed refrigerator. What a concept, that. A machine to preserve food. Brilliant. He had done it with magic, but this was nearly as effective. At least he would not be starving in this land without magic. Better than that, Mr. Gold had a respectable knowledge of cooking and, best of all, enjoyed doing it.

Knowing how to spot a good thing right in front of him, Rumple relaxed and let Mr. Gold cook him dinner. Not bad. Things could have been much worse.

Mr. Gold knew how many pills to take with the Scotch he had already poured to achieve the precise state of relief he wanted, so Rumple obeyed easily and headed for his morning room. Who cared if it was evening? Mr. Gold had put the most comfortable couch in there. And Mr. Gold had a substantial portion of the most prized objects in his collection curated in wood-framed glass china cabinets for easy perusal.

Rumple strolled from one hutch to the next listening to what Mr. Gold knew about each of the objects within while he sipped his Scotch and leaned on his cane. Pain began to recede into a pleasant fuzz. He stopped to wind a clock on the mantle. The positive clicking of the gears and the rhythm of long habit soothed him, both of them. It might not be potion chemistry, but Mr. Gold had a few things right. He started a fire in the fireplace and was on his way back to the couch and the book on the end table when he saw it.

There, in the cabinet beside the fireplace, out of place among the other curios, was her teacup.

Rumple tightened his grip on his Scotch and had to stop clenching his jaw when he heard the grinding of his teeth. 

The time had come to take care of certain things. Moe French owned an often in arrears little flower-shop off Main Street. Before the curse, Rumple could not take the chance that extinguishing Sir Maurice could disrupt his path to his son, but now. Now the curse had been cast and all he had to do to find Baelfire was wait. That meant he had a little time in which to plan a murder. Carefully. Slowly. This could not be rushed.

Mr. Gold felt a stab of envy at the ease of casual homicide in the Enchanted Forest. He began making a list of people he would prefer to dispose of and he mocked Rumple for not having seen to the more annoying ones when he had had the opportunity. Rumple smirked at him.

"Focus, my friend," he murmured aloud to himself.

Moe French. This would require careful thought. Good thing Mr. Gold was a lawyer.

Natural causes, or an accident, or? It seemed clear that finding the body was essential. No need for a missing persons case. He had to admit here that, along with his law degree, Mr. Gold's intimate relationship with cop dramas gave Rumple a boost. Contract law may have been Mr. Gold's speciality, but he had been a good student. Of course he had.

A heart attack in a portly middle-aged man would raise no suspicions at all. Cannot have Regina or Graham, Mr. Gold smiled at the mention of Graham, interested in Mr. French's tragic demise.

Had not Mr. Gold seen good old Moe at the Dark Star pharmacy picking up medications? He had. Many times, because, after all, Storybrooke only had just the one pharmacy, and Mr. Gold had his own prescriptions to tend. This was all too easy. He held the lease on the pharmacy, so an inspection was clearly in order.

That dwarf Clark would not bat an eyelash at a property inspection to ensure the safe compounding and storage of medications according to health department regulations. Investigating the premises would provide an easy, innocent way to figure out exactly which drugs kept Moe going. If that panned out, and any of those medications could be put to good use, he would simply assess the building some essential maintenance requirements, shut down the pharmacy at the right time of the month and assist Moe toward his eternal rest.

If not, the ex-king was a florist after all; lots of plants had toxic properties. Something would surely take care of matters easily enough. Preferably a bit slowly so that he would seem to have simply got sick and died. Nobody questioned unfortunate circumstances like that. These things happened.

Moe's dearly departed corpse would have to pass a toxin screen, of course, so his choice of agent would need to either be something beyond the Storybrooke laboratory's capacity to detect or be a drug they expected to find in his system considering his prescription regimen. And that was only an insurance policy against the very unlikely possibility of Doctor Whale deciding to do an autopsy. At Regina's behest though? The woman was incredulous by nature and observant. He would have to cover all possible avenues.

Besides, if all else failed, he could paste Clark for incompetence and claim he committed malpractice when restoring the pharmacy after inspection and renovation. Mistakes happened. Mr. Gold could defend him easily enough, even get him off the manslaughter charge if he felt particularly charitable. And if he did not cause a fuss over inspections.

He could always employ the disgraced dwarf as a maid after he lost his license. Mr. Gold's house was decidedly dusty.

Rumple Gold sipped his Scotch and then retired to his study to begin researching heart medications on the internet. This world had its own magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be curious to see what you think about my take on the We Are Both concept. I liked it when it popped into my head and I'll continue to play with it. Calling memories to the forefront seems like listening to me, I don't know what it's like in anyone else's mind of course. What about you? How do you remember things? Meanwhile, Rumple has a lot to do. He'll be a busy Dark One. *smirk* Also, I now know how fun it is to plan a murder. *smirks again*


	8. Chapter 8

Mr. Gold had insisted he go to bed by midnight. Going to bed was a normal thing that Mr. Gold did, enjoyed even. Rumple did not know what to make of that any longer. He had not slept much if at all for centuries and having a bedtime was outrageous. And for children.

Yet still, Mr. Gold yawned and his eyes stung. His limbs felt heavier and heavier. That mind which had been so quick just a few hours ago now got confused and could not focus. At last, Rumple himself began to feel muddled and wondered why he had continued to push Mr. Gold in the first place. They were a middle-aged man with a bum ankle and a nine-to-five job in addition to their duties as landlord of Storybrooke.

Finally capitulating, Rumple let Mr. Gold teach him his bedtime routine. Mr. Gold had a routine for just about everything. The now thwarted Dark One Rumple chafed at his own enjoyment of Mr. Gold's diligent dental hygiene. Yes, Mr. Gold had enviable teeth, but Rumple had things to do and having to account for basic bodily needs like cleanliness and rest irked him sharply.

That understood, Mr. Gold's pajamas were smooth and his bed soft and warm. He might be able to indulge a few hours spent in this manner.

A horrid screeching startled Rumple awake before daylight and Mr. Gold informed him that the dreadful feelings his body reported were entirely his fault. Mr. Gold silenced the alarm. If he had listened, and gone to bed at a reasonable hour, his ankle would not hurt as much, nor his back, nor would he feel sluggish and headachy. No accounting for the booze and pills on that last complaint. Certainly not, he told Mr. Gold.

Then Mr. Gold thought of something so heavenly it had to be imagined. But his curiosity piqued and Rumple again followed Mr. Gold's lead into his bathroom. He did pause Mr. Gold in his morning ablutions when they stood disrobed in front of the mirror. Mr. Gold was a thin man. His pale skin stretched over lean muscle and the contours of his bones were clearly visible in places. Not jutting unhealthily or anything, but the man had nothing to spare. He reminded Rumple of his days as a hungry spinner. This would be rectified. No need for such privations.

Sure, the Dark One had kept Rumple pretty much as he had been when he had stabbed Zoso, but here in the land without magic, Rumple saw no need to appear hungrier than he could afford. 

Mr. Gold liked the idea and replaced the tea and toast he had planned for breakfast with something huge and sausage laden at Granny's. Like the full Breakfast Special he never ordered but always wanted. Pancakes, fruit, eggs any way he liked, bacon, hash-browns and of course the sausage. Not to leave off the hot chocolate. Granny's Breakfast Special would feed any family of four but was most frequently seen placed in front of a smiling and slightly portly dwarf. Rumple almost leapt at the idea but then remembered, he was both men now and sudden, huge changes to his routine would be noticed. 

Mr. Gold scowled in the mirror so Rumple compromised. He would order his toast with a side of sausage. They both liked sausage.

Rumple would not have called Mr. Gold handsome, he had thought himself a decade past handsome when he became the Dark One, but the lack of scales were an improvement. And the man had steady brown eyes which he recognized as his from so long ago. He could see how, in one of those many fine suits in his considerable collection, he might make it as far as distinguished with his angular face and flashing gold tooth. A nice touch, that one.

Mr. Gold grew tired of his gawking appraisal and again thought of what he was calling a shower. Rumple had only ever thought of the word shower in association with thunder, rain, wet and biting cold, but Mr. Gold's memory promised something else entirely. So he turned to the glass walled bathtub behind him. 

For all the cruel things Regina had done, she had kept her word to give him comfort. The tub included accessibility grab bars which allowed Mr. Gold to bathe without falling or needing to bring his cane into the tub.

And then he took a back seat to see what Mr. Gold would do. Mr. Gold turned the knobs until he determined the flow and temperature of the water to be just right. He stepped in.

Rumple gasped at the heat and steam billowing around him. The spray hit him square in the chest as Mr. Gold maneuvered to face the stream of water. Hot water under pressure. Miraculous, marvelous, divine, unearthly, sublime. All of those things. His body warmed and he let out a loud groan as tensions slipped away under the onslaught of pleasure. Mr. Gold put his face into the stream and scrubbed his hair back with his hands. Rumple held him there until they were forced to draw breath. He earned a frown from Mr. Gold for his trouble.

Mr. Gold turned around to let the water course down his back and wet his hair thoroughly before reaching for the shampoo. What a weird word. But the sudsy lather and head massage Mr. Gold gave them both did not go amiss. Not at all. Rumple groaned again as Mr. Gold washed the soap from his hair.

Unfortunately for him, his ankle could not stand unaided for long. Rumple thought his first shower would be over all too soon until Mr. Gold unhooked the shower head from the wall and eased down onto the shower chair. He ran the wand all over, into every crevice, before replacing it in an alternate hook beside him to begin again with what he called body wash. The steam kept him warm while Mr. Gold scrubbed his chest, arms, pits, legs and-

The slippery sensation between his legs and Mr. Gold's firm hands caught Rumple by surprise. A far cry from the quick scrub with a little bar soap he was used to, Mr. Gold rolled and massaged him. Rumple arched and felt himself start to stiffen, the blood rushing for his groin. Mr. Gold seemed suddenly nervous, but Rumple told him, under no uncertain terms, that he was not to stop short.

Mr. Gold had not felt this in years either. 

His methods were a bit different from Rumple's usual rough tugs. To begin with, Mr. Gold used his left hand. Rumple kept waiting for the soap to sting and force them to stop, but this body wash, he would figure out exactly what it was later, seemed mild enough to cleanse but not sting when it came in contact with the sensitive opening at his head. And Mr. Gold liked having his thumb rub over his end. So did Rumple.

Mr. Gold lost himself to impatience before Rumple did and picked up the pace. This left Rumple little choice and at that point their panting, moans and sighs filled the steamy bathroom. All too soon he stiffened and jerked in his hand. Relief.

Rumple leaned against the tile wall of the shower while the warm spurt of fluid cooled on his chest and belly. Mr. Gold seemed mildly embarrassed, if completely pleased, sated. Rumple could not fathom why the man should be embarrassed, must have had something to do with customs in this world.

Rumple reached for some more of the body wash to finish up while Mr. Gold languidly let him. Mr. Gold very much liked the feel of fresh soap and hot water on his now flaccid anatomy. So did Rumple.

Finally, Mr. Gold seemed to arouse and told Rumple that he would be late for work if he cleaned the shower now, as they had dawdled, so he would be cleaning the bathroom when they got home that night. Rumple thought the trade-off was worth it.

He would need to hire a maid as soon as possible. It would have to be someone uninteresting to him though, he would not repeat the mistakes he made with Belle.

Mr. Gold dressed in a rush and did not allow Rumple to linger in the mirror to look at his suit. He reasoned that being late would disrupt his image and tip off the town that things had changed.

But then again, maybe Mr. Gold need not have worried quite so much. The short walk between his shop and the diner illuminated the change in everyone. People looked up and at each other rather than away and down at the sidewalk. They gave each other small smiles of acknowledgment. Downtown Storybrooke experienced a bustle it had never before known. The pace of the entire town had kicked up a notch. He would have had to have been blind not to see it. 

Mr. Gold snidely wondered if this upswell in activity could translate into tenants paying their rent on time without the typical wheedling and grinching. Rumple, a huge step closer to finding his son, suggested that perhaps Mr. Gold needed a new hobby if the most ebullient thing he could hope for was easy rent collection. 

He would teach him to spin.

Rumple did not thwart Mr. Gold's inclination to roll his eyes at a passerby. He needed him, for now, in order to appear normal. At that thought, Mr. Gold bristled at the idea that Rumple could possibly, and very well might, extinguish him. Rumple thought perhaps Mr. Gold felt smug at the implied threat, as if he knew something Rumple did not. Time would tell, but for now, Rumple agreed that they were roommates in extremely close quarters and it was best to make good use of each other, to work together. With Rumple in charge by virtue of his being older and not created by a curse based loosely on himself.

Rumple shook off the dizzying turn of his thoughts and entered Granny's. The augmented buzz of patrons in place of the usual glum and muted conversations assaulted Mr. Gold's ears and made him feel snappish. Rumple took this as a good sign. As if everyone in town was in the first collective good mood in, well, forever. He was tempted to smile wolfishly, but Mr. Gold warned against it.

He was right, so Rumple approached the counter and gave his order to Granny.

"Tea, toast and a side of sausage, Mrs. Lucas, if you please." Mr. Gold was defensively polite, he expected surliness.

Granny appeared to be on the verge of questioning his change in habit, in fact she had her mouth halfway open, when a loud bell brought the diner to silence before the end of its first peal.

There were another seven peals before it went silent again.

Everyone stared around the room at everyone else.

Then Granny smiled at him and said, "Of course, Mr. Gold, will you be staying for breakfast or is it to go?"

"I think I will stay, thank you," Rumple replied, not giving Mr. Gold the chance. He wanted to stay and listen. But in this, he and Mr. Gold agreed.

"You can take that empty booth, there and it will be right up."

Rumple took his place in the booth furthest from the door and picked up a discarded copy of the Mirror, "Drunken Tourist Destroys Historic Sign."

His smirk lasted longer than the time it took for his breakfast to appear. In fact it broadened when the only resident in Storybrooke in a foul temper stormed in.

Regina looked apoplectic. The energetic buzz went on unabated, because no one had stopped talking about the clock tower's sudden and decided functionality long enough to take a breath, let alone notice a discomfited ex-queen.

It was a fine morning indeed. And the sausage was excellent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am experimenting all over the place. This We Are Both thing just took a turn I did not see coming. I hope you liked it. I'm delighted with them so far, but I wasn't planning on writing two characters in the place of one. When I sat down with this chapter I changed my attitude from, "I shouldn't write right now because I don't know exactly what happens next," to "I'm not sure what's happening next in the timeline, woo hoo! Let's find out." So far I'm satisfied. These two are bound to have some more awkward moments and I'm looking forward to their antics. I do want to hear what you think about this experiment of mine, is it working? Are you at all confused? If it were you, would you meld them eventually? Or keep them as they are? I haven't decided yet, but I suspect they will let me know when we reach a decision point. So far I like these two dorks.


	9. Chapter 9

Mr. Gold grew impatient the longer Rumple sat in Granny's past eight in the morning. Ruby had refreshed his tea three times and Mr. Gold had begun trying to squirm against a full bladder. Rumple had much more self control than that.

Until a sharp spasm got his attention and he relented. Mr. Gold set his jaw and slapped several bills on the table before excusing himself to the facilities. Midstream, Mr. Gold lit into Rumple about his stubborn stupidity, the dangers of infection at their age and how completely childish refusing to care for one's person was. Mr. Gold, a mature person, expected more from a supposedly centuries old being like Rumple.

It was impossible to concede and save face while sharing a mind. Rumple had to grudgingly agree to some modicum of self-care though he vowed he would not tolerate such rigidity in schedule or habits. Mr. Gold began prattling on about having to live together and needing to come to some kind of agreement, a contract if that was what it took, to get Rumple not to kill them both out of obstinacy.

Being not the only stubborn one in his head, Rumple finally allowed Mr. Gold to have the last word: some nonsense about how he would come to enjoy being clean, tidy and orderly. There were benefits to this. Mr. Gold insisted on this point.

They did appear well kempt. Rumple stood up straighter as he strode back through Granny's toward Mr. Gold's shop.

The front of the shop, Rumple liked. The wood finishes and dim interior reminded him of the Dark Castle. All around him, objects from his past were curated like some kind of shrine to his old life. He smiled as he fingered a set of grotesque puppets.

The back of the shop, well that was another matter.

Neat, tidy? Whatever standard Mr. Gold applied to his person, he apparently lacked this same control over his place of work. Where Mr. Gold's house only just missed being cluttered, the shop's office blew by that border and right into central Disaster-land. The place was piled floor to ceiling with, Mr. Gold supplied the word: crap. Rumple's laboratory had never looked this bad on his worst decade. And he had had some decidedly wretched ones. The clutter even hung suspended from the ceiling.

Mr. Gold flushed and clenched his jaw at the rebuke. 

Hypocrite.

Rumple could not be certain which one or both of them had thought that at the other. Where Rumple did not have the same hygiene concerns Mr. Gold did, Mr. Gold's place of employ was a hot mess.

One of them started it.

A chuckle. Then a coughing snort. Then they were laughing whole heartedly, one at the other in turn.

When their laughter had quieted, they struck their very first accord. Rumple would not fuss or complain over Mr. Gold's hygiene habits and Mr. Gold would assist Rumple with the organization of their work and living spaces. Slowly, though, because rapid change would draw attention. At least the front of the shop needed no such intervention.

With that, Rumple let Mr. Gold take him on a tour of their business. Rumple needed to know what his customers would expect, Mr. Gold snickered at that-what customers? Anyway, Rumple needed to have a solid grasp of what took place in the shop so that he could maintain the illusion without misstep. Rumple supplied Mr. Gold in turn with the histories of the most important items in the shop and what, if any, magical properties they possessed back in the Enchanted Forest.

Precariously up on a ladder, Rumple thrust a certain gauntlet firmly back into a pile as deep as it could go. He fought off the image of holding Belle against him once the three witches had gone. How warm, how solid, the look in her eyes as she told him point blank he cared for her.

Though the two had all of each other's memories, it was a great deal to sort and the memory of an emotion did not compare to the experience. And having access to a huge amount of personal information did not equate to having retrieved it all. 

Mr. Gold clutched the ladder wide-eyed as he experienced the force of True Love from this angle. 

Their discussion of needing to do away with Moe French had been one steeped in grief, regret and vengeance. In anger. This potent recall of a point in time where he had been falling in love, was already in love, with Belle gave the landlord perspective. To say the least.

Missing Belle was one thing, loving her all over again was something else entirely.

Rumple tried to pull away from the memory as hastily as he could, but Mr. Gold just stood there and stared at it. It felt like someone had just put his most raw and fragile self on a pillory. Rumple waited for the rotten fruit lobbed by Mr. Gold to strike him where it would hurt the most.

But no incoming fruit arrived.

So Rumple, unwilling to be the only one so exposed, poked into Mr. Gold's memories.

The man had never been in love.

Regina had kept her word, Mr. Gold was certainly comfortable in a cardboard, greyscale kind of way, but happy he had never been. He had no memories of true happiness, or of real love. His parents had tolerated him, back in Scotland, but he had been an inconvenience more than a treasure.

Cruel, Regina, very cruel.

Mr. Gold's eyes were seeping moisture at this revelation while Rumple doubled down on his anger. Regina need not remain safe and snug in her little snow-globe world much longer.

Just before noon, the sheriff's car screamed by with wailing sirens for one block only to cut them off abruptly. Rumple Gold hurried to his front window to watch. Sheriff Graham Humbert went around to the back of Granny's.

Mr. Gold watched Graham intently, but Rumple did too.

Five minutes later, the sheriff escorted Miss Swan yet again to the station in irons. Rumple wanted to intercede immediately, to investigate. The Savior could not break the curse from behind bars. Mr. Gold stopped him, urging patience. He could intervene as a lawyer if necessary, but it would be unseemly to chase the sirens.

He was right, so Rumple let it go.

Three hours later, he heard voices passing by on the street. Mr. Gold thought it might be young Henry, the boy he had procured for Madame Mayor and his teacher. The third voice, he did not recognize. Rumple hastened out of the back to observe.

Lo and behold, Miss Swan, with no sirens or sheriff in sight, was deep in conversation with the boy and his teacher. Snow White, of course. Her mother.

Mr. Gold smirked, he told Rumple so. Mr. Gold went on for some time about Rumple needing to calm down, settle in and be patient. Hundreds of years of patient did not impress Mr. Gold, however. Mr. Gold did not want their cover blown any more than Rumple did and Mr. Gold reminded Rumple that he did not have power here, not as he had before.

But Rumple did have power here, he had Mr. Gold. This made Mr. Gold shift from foot to foot uneasily. Rumple had always used the tools at hand to his best advantage and he would do so here, in this land without magic. Regina, unwittingly, had given him a powerful tool.

Rumple had sorted a small amount of bric-a-brac by the time the sirens went by again, close to closing time. The sheriff returned and parked about half an hour later, but with no one in the back seat this time.

They both wondered what had happened. The sheriff's department had not, in nearly three decades, done as much work as it had in the past twenty-four hours. It Rumple did not miss his guess, Mr. Gold had begun to see the merit in Rumple's mission.

It had gone dark before Mr. Gold informed him it was closing time and that they typically left on schedule. Rumple's mouth stretched into a grim smile. Time to go find out how Regina's day had been.

"What a mess!" The former queen's apple tree had lost a limb, a big one. Sawdust coated the apple-strewn grass. Mr. Gold felt a pang for the waste of fruit and the destruction of a prize fruit tree. Such a soft spot for the mayor's apple tree? Must have been Regina's doing. Smart. Rumple, however grinned.

Taunting Regina turned out to be a temptation Rumple could not resist. It might not have been wise to insinuate quite as strongly as he did that he knew something, but the look on Regina's face made it all worth it. Mr. Gold, while nervous that Rumple would blow their cover, snagged an apple off the tree and took a bite. He enjoyed Regina's anxiety as much as Rumple did.

And he loved learning of Rumple's code word and how effective it was. Mr. Gold casually tossed the partially eaten apple over his shoulder uncaring if it hit Regina or not. They felt entirely smug.

It had been a good day for both of them.

Mr. Gold demonstrated his bloodthirstiness while they cleaned the bathroom later that evening. According to Mr. Gold, medications all have specific colors and codes on the pills themselves, a safety measure. That meant that if he simply switched the medication from one bottle to another, the pharmacy might pick it up and Mr. French himself might notice. He had to hope good old Moe was on a medication conducive to over or under dosing. Mr. Gold thought a change in concentration might slide under the radar, a new word for Rumple and he liked it.

Yes, even if an autopsy were to be performed, an over or under dose would be attributed to Moe himself and it would be ruled accidental incompetence, or at worst, a suicide. Perfect. Time to schedule an inspection. Rumple thought he should wait about a month to give himself a chance to get a good feel for the dynamics in town. Careful always yielded better fruit than hasty. Mr. Gold agreed.

Looking around the freshly tidied bathroom, Mr. Gold felt a surge of satisfaction at the clean feeling he got from their efforts. Rumple rolled his eyes deliberately at the mirror.

"We have more important things to do than clean bathrooms. That's what maids are for," Rumple chastised him. "Our time is much to valuable for this nonsense."

To his surprise, Mr. Gold retorted, "But it isn't nonsense when it's the workroom in our shop?"

Rumple pointed at Mr. Gold in the mirror, "So we understand each other, I am in charge and you speak and act only as I allow. You are about as substantial as a shadow, a dark patch that follows me around. You, at the moment, have more use than a shadow so I will allow your continued existence, but you are nothing but a construct. A figment of Regina's imagination and one I will tolerate. For now."

Rumple threatened Mr. Gold with all the gravitas of a centuries old Dark One.

But Mr. Gold would not be cowed. "I can make your life a living hell, Mr. Dark One- your name is ridiculous by the way. There may come a time where you have more control over me and you may even succeed in destroying me, but know that I will fight you with every weapon at my disposal and considering I have you and all your memories, that arsenal is considerable." Mr. Gold leaned toward the mirror to stare at Rumple, "You are everything flashy and bombastic, but do not mistake my subtlety for weakness."

Rumple was about to respond when Mr. Gold went on right over the top of him.

"We have to live together. For now, even if you wanted to, there is nothing you can do about me. So I can make this easy, or I can make this hard. I would make a much better ally, considering what you have in mind for us. Make your choice." Mr. Gold had hard eyes when he wanted to.

Rumple, as accustomed to making deals as Mr. Gold, considered the offer in silence for a moment. "Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my desire to be rid of you. You clearly have a sort of, competence, which would be useful. I will make you a deal. If we can learn to live together harmoniously and you prove useful, when I do gain the ability to destroy you, I won't. But know this, the second you become overly burdensome, all bets are off and I will obliterate you the first chance I get."

Mr. Gold knew a corner when he saw one, but forcing Rumple to agree to let him survive should he be useful was more than he had had a moment before, "Deal." 

They stared at each other in the mirror. Neither blinked. Eventually Rumple Gold walked out of the bathroom to see about dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just can't get over Rumple Gold. They are SO much fun. You're welcome for the respite from the angst. But don't worry, it'll be back. Consider them an interlude. :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to give a special thanks to @Golden-Rumbelle for the beautiful cover she made for this work. The Rumbelle fandom has made this friendship a possibility, even half way around the world from one another. OUAT is special like that. Thank you so much, GR, really, this is above and beyond.

  
Rumple Gold awoke in darkness and pain. In burning agony. At first only a confused jumble of voices registered in his mind, but it was accompanied by moaning out loud and panting breaths. Rumple began drafting the voices in his mind like he used to draft wool at his spinning wheel. Pull, so gently, a few fibers forward at a time, then allow the motion of the wheel to draw them from their loose fluffy form into tightly bound sense. Much more useful that way.

Rumple distinguished Mr. Gold from himself after a few moments of effort. The man was confused still and bleating about pain and someone, a monster, in his head. The poor sod thought he was crazy. He might not be wrong about that one, after all. But Rumple reached around the piercing, throbbing, stabbing in his head and the burning fire in his eyes, nose and throat to begin taking breaths. He sought out Mr. Gold and imagined clamping a hand over his metaphorical mouth then looking into his eyes.

Shut. The. Hell. Up.

It was not as if he could actually make Mr. Gold stop thinking and blathering in their head, but he did get his attention. Mr. Gold focused on Rumple and began asking sensical questions.

What happened to us?

Oh good, the landlord was in fact still sane enough to figure out they were not alone in their head. Organized thinking was good. Very good.

Rumple did not know what had happened to them yet. He could not remember.

Then Mr. Gold opened their eyes-

FIRE. Pain and anguish. They could not see anything but a dark blur. Mr. Gold's hand flew to his eyes to rub and-

The fire flared with the pain increasing ten fold when an oily substance was rubbed into the delicate tissues of their eyelids. Rumple howled and yanked his trembling hand from his face.

You imbecile!

Rumple could not believe Mr. Gold had really just tried that without thinking about why it had hurt so much in the first place. The cry they had heard was definitely their own. Tears streamed down Rumple Gold's face from eyes and nose. They were in quite a state.

But the tears made it feel a little better and Rumple did not have to convince Mr. Gold to remain where he was, lying on what felt like a hardwood floor. With that decided, they began trying to piece together what had happened.

Last thing you remember?

Closing the shop for the night. No. Someone broke into the shop and we heard it.

Ella/Ashley.

Then she maced us.

Mr. Gold provided the name of the substance they had been assaulted with.

Are we going to go blind?

Rumple began probing Mr. Gold for what he knew about mace. Probably not, but they needed to wash their eyes and the sooner the better. How they had ended up out cold on the floor of the shop could wait.

The good news was that Mr. Gold knew every inch of the shop and could make his way out the back door and to the facilities without having to open his eyes. Or so he claimed. But Rumple decided he could take a chance on this because the thought of taking another dose of mace to the eyes by opening them again appealed far less than tripping and falling and even breaking a bone or two.

Mr. Gold groped the front of their trousers looking for the keys. And did not find them.

That explained why Ella/Ashley had broken in and assailed him. She was after the contract. Which meant the keys might be still in the safe, if she had not taken them all together. Without those keys it would be a long walk home with burning eyes, if he could even stand to open them at all, only to have to break into his own home at he end of it by climbing in a window. Great for a middle aged man with a dysfunctional foot and ankle. That or he would have to sleep here and hope someone found him in the morning.

Rumple could not think of a worse way to maintain his well-established fearsome reputation.

The keys had better be in the damned safe.

Mr. Gold began to cast about on the floor beside him for his cane. He did not immediately find it, but he could feel the edge of one of his counters. A landmark to follow and a place to start.

Crawling on a hardwood did no favors for his knees and Rumple felt his age for the first time in centuries. And his headache. They must have hit their head somehow, or else Ella/Ashley cold-cocked them. After a brief bumbling about on the floor, he did find his cane and gratefully used it and a counter to haul himself to his feet. The headache worsened temporarily, but both men celebrated this first victory, feeling far less helpless now at least able to stand up. Agency was as important to Mr. Gold as it was to Rumple, it turned out.

With that and Mr. Gold's intimate knowledge of the shop, they felt their way from the counter with the solid and cold metal of the antique cash register to the wall with the still open safe.

And the keys were still in the lock.

Ella/Ashley must have left in a hurry, probably too frightened to consider anything more nefarious than taking what she came for.

Rumple Gold gripped the keys firmly in hand and leaned against the wall in relief. Now all they had to do was make it to the bathroom out behind the shop, preferably without fractures.

Mr. Gold went slowly and gingerly, feeling out each step and thinking carefully about what little they had rearranged together. Rumple had to admit he was impressed. Mr. Gold got them around each pile of junk and did not hit their head on any of the suspended detritus before putting his hand on the comforting, round knob of the back door. Once through, Mr. Gold felt along the outside wall about two feet before finding another door.

Then he rubbed his fingers over the keys.

Which key?

Mr. Gold growled at him. Then he fingered each of them in turn. The worst that could happen would be for them to try half a dozen keys before they would find the right one. But Mr. Gold selected one to try first with some small amount of confidence. And he was correct.

Rumple wanted to dash inside and find relief, but Mr. Gold persisted in his careful navigation and reached slowly within to find the sink allowing the door to close behind him in the tiny restroom.

Once they reached the sink though, all bets were off and Rumple seized the faucets and wrenched them to full blast before shoving his face in the stream. They both sighed in relief as coolness began to calm their inflamed face.

But the offending substance did not readily rinse away. Rumple experimentally rubbed at it in a tiny area only to have an instant return of the horrendous burning. Oily, the stuff was oily. Mr. Gold had some high grade detergents around here for cleaning grease off his hands. Good thing this shop dealt in antiques as well as pawned items.

But Mr. Gold reached out for dish soap that lived beside the hand soap on the counter top first. Better to start there than with something more caustic, just in case. Rumple agreed. Mr. Gold lathered his hands and then they braced for being forced to rub the soap into their skin. No other way to get the oily residue off than that so through gritted teeth and growls, moans and Mr. Gold's admirable vocabulary of curses Rumple Gold cleaned the pepper spray laboriously from his face.

He must have had his face under the stream of cold water for at least half an hour after he could no longer feel the residual greasy layer of pain. It still burned, but not nearly so much. His back hurt along with his headache, but it took real courage to even consider removing his face from the water let alone opening his eyes.

Would he be able to see?

At first all he saw was blackness. The burning, while reduced, had not disappeared and Rumple began to panic. Blindness would keep him from his son.

Mr. Gold fumbled backwards and flicked on the light, which stabbed them in the brain with a new source of torture. But they could see the light and after a moment, they could see.

Rumple could not say who started crying again, but neither of them commented. They cried and the tears soothed them.

Then the exhaustion kicked in after the ordeal and Rumple told Mr. Gold that it was most definitely time to go home and go to bed. Even in their current state, Mr. Gold spared a smirk for his compatriot.

On the way, Mr. Gold grilled him relentlessly about why he had found it necessary to deal for a child. Mr. Gold, apparently, had little understanding or inclination toward children. He simply did not see the appeal.

Flattered, but uninterested. That is what he had said to Madame Mayor when she had come to him for Henry. Mr. Gold had found children to be a necessary evil of his profession as a lawyer and definitely not one he enjoyed.

Rumple however, now in his car and driving toward home and a place to hide, thought about the rewards for their travails this evening. He began planning for how to recover the infant and use Ashley's behavior as leverage. Over the top of Mr. Gold's chagrin, Rumple imagined his arms full of soft baby as he rocked and sang gently to it. He thought of Baelfire and then his heart lurched for Belle, who never even got that chance, regardless of her circumstances.

And Rumple drowned Mr. Gold's gripes in a consuming fantasy where he could pretend Ashley's baby belonged to Belle and himself. He could probably put the courts off for at least a time while he dragged his feet finding a suitable situation for the baby. He could even consider adopting it himself if he found he just could not let go. Mr. Gold moaned in the background the entire car ride home.

Rumple set the keys down in the ceramic bowl on the table beside the front door and closed it behind them.

Of course he could not actually adopt the baby in question, he had to go find Baelfire. Mr. Gold sighed in relief at that thought.

Just what was the nature of Mr. Gold's obvious malfunction?

Mr. Gold imagined in alarming detail full diapers and endless screaming along with snotty noses and drool.

Clearly the man had some issues. Had he ever even held a baby? Had he ever had his own?

To the second question, Rumple already knew the answer but he poked Mr. Gold with it anyway. The man could not know how inconsequential such discomforts were in the face of the parent-child bond. He clearly could not fathom it. For Rumple, nothing mattered more in his rather protracted life than the love of his son. He could not countenance Mr. Gold's frigid stance on the matter. Rumple pitied him all over again. Regina had installed some definite quirks in his alter-ego.

No, Mr. Gold had never even held a baby in his whole life.

If Rumple had his way, that was about to change.

He enjoyed feeling much cleaner after a vigorous shower and Rumple Gold fell asleep almost instantly.

One evening later, Rumple stared into the fire smoldering low in the hearth while Mr. Gold nattered on about the merits of Netflix and a show he was looking forward to.

Mr. Gold had gotten his way. After a fashion. Rumple did not have a baby in his arms but he did have something much more valuable. A relationship with Miss Swan and a future favor owed him. Deal making came with the occupational hazard of neither party ever being completely satisfied. Both sides have to give something in order to move forward and Rumple had definitely come out ahead. And yet.

Still, the cost of coming out ahead was the loss of the balm to his aching heart. He missed Bae. He missed Belle. The loneliness gnawed at him and Mr. Gold did nothing to ease that burden.

Mr. Sunshine- the only partner in the deal to get everything he wanted- had been smiling disgustingly all evening at how things had worked out and Rumple wished he could beat him with his own cane. The toad continued to smirk at Rumple's pugilistic thoughts. He thought they should celebrate but Rumple had denied him booze having a distinct and recent memory of what a hangover did to his acumen.

And no, he had made a promise that he would never suffer another procedural so Mr. Gold could kiss that off. Rumple would not bend on that one.

Mr. Gold taunted him aloud, "You're pathetic, you know that? We just acquired some very valuable merchandise instead of a heap of work out of a deal you made and all you can do is mope? Such a soft touch."

Rumple rose to the bait, "What was that phrase you used on me last night? Oh yes. Fuck off!"

"Come on now then, don't be that way. Let's go watch something anyway, anything you want. If not Scotch, how about iced cream? Anything but this undignified sulking. How did you ever terrify anyone while entertaining such a vile habit? The Great and Terrible Dark One will melancholy you to death. Tremble! Tremble in your little straw houses!"

"Enough!" Rumple surged to his feet and headed for the kitchen. If frozen dessert would shut that man up, he would do it.

Mr. Gold smiled through Rumple's scowl and it felt like someone had attached puppet strings to his face, pulling in uncomfortable and mismatching directions.

They both lapsed into silence with raspberry-chocolate on their tongue.

"On this, we can agree," Rumple offered as he headed toward their den and its enormous movie screen with the tub of iced cream tucked under his arm. 

It took twenty-five huge spoonfuls to keep Mr. Gold quiet long enough for Rumple to pick something and adjust the ratings given to much of Mr. Gold's recommendations list. He must have selected "not interested" fifty times before giving up on recommendations and pursuing the What's Hot list in desperation to escape the procedurals.

By the time he finally found something about a wizard and some strangely small people half the size of the dwarves he had been used to, the iced cream had distended their belly to the point of discomfort. They had had a large evening meal not long ago curtesy of Mr. Gold's culinary flare and perky mood.

Rumple stubbornly took one more bite and unfastened his belt. Mr. Gold informed him that they would probably reflux all night because of his behavior but Rumple ignored him.

Three hours later, Rumple Gold was fast asleep in his chair and dreaming of dark places and drums in the deep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything is better with iced cream. I can't be the only raspberry chocolate fan out there. :) Glad you're all here, drop me a line and let me know what you think so far. Also, you can find me on tumblr: @theoneandonlylittlebird.


	11. Chapter 11

November in Maine had never been a particularly pleasant time of year, alternating between rain and snow of which either were preferable to sleet. Mr. Gold's ankle hurt worse habitually in the cold months thanks to the persistent, frigid, damp deteriorating the usual stiffness into near rigidity at the worst of times. They had to soak their ankle more evenings than not just to be able to walk at all the following day. Winter rent days required premedication, whether or not he was supposed to drive under the influence. No one objected to a slightly less surly than otherwise would be landlord and it was not as if he were not accustomed to the effects of the narcotic anyway. He endangered no one for the modest amount of pain relief he received with this misbehavior.

This day was particularly foul. A disgusting blend of wind, sleet and sticky, sodden flurries of snow slapped at him and turned the sidewalks treacherous in spite of the multiple and liberal applications of salt and sand.

Well, Regina, you picked Maine for its charm, after all, Rumple ruminated bitterly as he hunched against the gusts on his way into the building. Mr. Gold offered no commentary. The man had been all but silent for the last week. 

The sheriff's accommodations were nothing extravagant. A two bedroom flat, one bathroom and an adjoined living-room and kitchen. There were nineteen other units just like it in this building. Washer and dryer were on site, but down in the basement with the storage lockers. The only real amenity to this drab establishment was the fireplace- whose upkeep in accordance with code was expensive and which needed to be cleaned regularly. Apparently Mr. Gold hired one of the dwarves, Leroy here, to be the chimney sweep and building manager in exchange for a break on the rent.

Leroy may have been a drunk, but Mr. Gold all too readily accepted his habitual custom as a lawyer which neatly recouped any losses on the rent. A tidy, if boring and predictable, arrangement. Much like the rest of Mr. Gold's life.

But today did not fit at all with Mr. Gold's very normal and straight forward quotidian.

Just about a week ago, Rumple Gold had come into the diner for his breakfast a little earlier that morning on account of Rumple's technique taking less time in the shower while Mr. Gold had howled. There had been no objections afterward, though.

The mood was obvious from the moment he opened the door.

Many shocked and somber faces looked furtively at their table companions. The susurration of whispers swept around the room like a fetid breeze. Some people hugged openly or leaned on one another and Ruby had thrown a sweater over her usual attire against the chill, metaphorical and literal, as November had well and truly arrived. 

Rumple approached the counter.

"What's going on here?" he murmured to Granny.

"Graham passed unexpectedly last night."

"Wh-what?" Mr. Gold spluttered.

"I know! It is such a shock! A fit young man like him to drop dead all of a sudden. It's so tragic." Granny looked at him earnestly. "I can add something to your tea this morning if you like, I've spiked the hot cocoa already but I know that's not your thing."

Mr. Gold stared at her, frozen with his mouth hanging open before hobbling out of the diner toward their shop as fast as their aching ankle would take them.

With the door slammed and locked behind them, Rumple yelled, fumbling back some agency, "Hey! What was that all about?"

"This is a small town, not a lot of people here, Dark One." Mr. Gold only called him that when he was being particularly obstreperous. 

Rumple did not appreciate being dragged across town by the construct that lived in his head, but he let it pass on account of the news.

They spent the day saying little to one another. Rumple decided to leave the shop closed for the day and do some deep cleaning, the floors needed attention. Mr. Gold felt like a ghost constantly looking over his shoulder, all but breathing on his ear. If only Rumple could figure out how to swat him.

Mr. Gold glowered at that.

It had been nearly a week since that day and Rumple was beginning to think that Mr. Gold might actually be slipping away as the curse weakened.

But here, standing in Graham's apartment, Mr. Gold resurfaced from his funk.

"Why would Graham have had a heart attack, being healthy as he was? I know of no family history to explain it," Mr. Gold addressed him after ensuring the door was firmly latched behind them.

Rumple raised his eyebrows before he spoke aloud to his wayward companion, "He didn't die of a heart attack."

"But that is what you read in the paper yesterday. They completed the autopsy report and it was ruled natural causes, a heart attack."

"That's not what happened."

Rumple sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Then he brought up a memory.

It was windy out on the open water and the deck rocked even in the relative calm. Sail fluttered in the rigging, suddenly unattended as all eyes were on the proceedings below. 

"I never loved you!" Milah spat at him.

Hearts were always wonderfully still warm when freshly torn from bodies, but the wind was cooling it quickly and denying Rumple the pleasure of enjoying its lingering heat. No matter. His anger would not have been conducive to lingering anyway.

A second later he was flicking the remaining dust from his fingers.

Mr. Gold had known of course, but deliberately reliving a memory was not the same as simply knowing an event had occurred. Mr. Gold's chest felt tight and he coughed. Nausea clawed at his stomach.

"And you think Regina did this?"

"Yes of course she did. That's not even a question."

"I want her dead." Mr. Gold said flatly.

"We have to take care of Moe first. Too many bodies appearing in quick succession would be problematic for us. We are not dealing with Graham anymore. Miss Swan will take up that mantle in a week and while that will get us closer to breaking the curse, she's more capable than is convenient for planning multiple murders." Rumple replied as he gave himself the tour.

"In fact," Rumple commented, "we will need to delay our plans for a little while at least because two heart attacks in quick succession will cause whispers if not worse. Our plans may require alteration."

Mr. Gold went silent again and Rumple shrugged before getting on with the task at hand.

It took the entire day to sort through a life. A fake life, but still, a life. With little commentary from Mr. Gold, Rumple tagged and sorted every possession in the sheriff's home. Some could be sold to consignment, most was garbage but he would donate what merited it to the thrift-shop, and at the end of the day he was left, sweaty and dirty, with one solitary cardboard box.

While Rumple could not understand Mr. Gold's reticence to simply sort those items in with the rest, Rumple was not heartless, unlike poor Graham.

"Gold?"

"What?"

"Was the sheriff your friend?"

"I don't have friends." Mr. Gold reached for Graham's jacket and Rumple let him. In fact, he decided to give Mr. Gold a moment and retreated to let him have free rein.

Mr. Gold's hands fisted in the leather. He seemed unsure of what to do now that he had control and his hands kneaded fitfully before finally seizing the jacket and pulling it to his lap. 

Mr. Gold remembered his last conversation with Graham, "Did I forget to shave?"

Rumple had appreciated the playful quip at the time, had even silently credited Mr. Gold with having accepted Rumple's influence at last.

Mr. Gold convulsively yanked the jacket collar to his nose and inhaled briefly before throwing the jacket back in the box and retreating into their mind behind Rumple's eyes.

Rumple had no idea what to say so he sat silently looking at the box of memorabilia on the coffee table in front of him.

"Maybe you don't have friends, but I'm sorry anyway, he seemed a good man." Rumple mumbled at last.

Rumple put in the phone call to their assistant Mr. Dove before rising from the couch, taking decisive steps out of the deadman's house, and shutting the door firmly behind him. Mr. Dove would deliver the box to their shop in the morning.

That evening, Rumple broke his promise to himself. He let Mr. Gold catch up on his favorite procedural.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time, but the next few will more than make up for it. Something I've been itching to ask you...  
> a poll of sorts on writing conventions.
> 
> 1\. How is the prose? Does it read smoothly for you?  
> 2\. Can you keep track of who is thinking/commenting between Rumple and Mr. Gold. Am I missing POV indicators? Or are there too many?  
> 3\. Does having two characters in the same POV cause a lack of clarity? Or does it work for you?  
> 4\. Any weird writing ticks that bug you? Strange prose habits I have that I may not know about?  
> 5\. Are you finding obvious editing flaws each chapter or am I catching most of those? Does this feel polished to you? Or does it need work?  
> 6\. Is the voice consistent? This one I worry about because I don't write with just one voice across all of my writing so I worry that one voice will intrude where it isn't appropriate.
> 
> I'd be delighted if any of you answered any of these, but if someone actually answered them all, there'd be mega brownie points.


	12. Chapter 12

"What is this?" Regina demanded, hands on her hips. Her car was still running in what could only generously be called a parking spot. The wind had blown the mayor's hair thoroughly and it could not even be called artfully messy.

Rumple Gold turned around slowly giving her a megawatt smile. "Good morning Madame Mayor, this is an inspection of the premises ahead of the coming survey by the Maine Department of Health. As landlord, I am responsible for any deficiencies of the facilities that could constitute a finding. I am here to ensure there will be no findings. I am certain the City of Storybrooke appreciates proactive and diligent adherence to both local and state regulation."

Rumple continued to smile toothily as he applauded Mr. Gold for that string of bureaucratic loquaciousness. Mr. Gold's pride swelled in their chest as both men watched Regina with raptor's eyes. Today, she was a mouse and they would be well fed.

"The City requires that the landlord give the tenant forty-eight hours prior notice before the landlord may enter the premises, excepting emergencies-" Regina looked more like a fish than a mouse with her mouth hanging open like that when he cut her off. Food either way.

"Here is the, unopened I might add, post marked letter I sent detailing the scope of the inspection and what the tenant could expect as far as disruptions to the business. You will observe here that the post mark is for two weeks ago." The dwarf of record cowered behind his counter while wiping at his nose appallingly. "What brings you by this morning, if I may ask?"

The muscles around Regina's mouth worked and quivered and her jaw clenched once before she answered, "A concerned citizen alerted me of an interruption in normal business practices at the pharmacy which prevented him from picking up his prescriptions on time."

"If you are referring to Mr. Sidney Glass, I have made prearrangements with the Storybrooke Hospital courier service to hand-deliver to all inconvenienced citizens any medications they require urgently today while the pharmacy is closed and to deliver non-urgent prescriptions tomorrow out of courtesy." Rumple Gold could not stop smiling.

"How tidy of you."

"Would you expect anything less from me, Madame Mayor? Now, if you will excuse me, my tour of the clean room is waiting and since the Dark Star Pharmacy is the only compounding pharmacy in Storybrooke, I want to minimize the disturbance of my visit as much as possible, please."

She may have been about to argue, but the curse caught her tongue and all she could do was glare at him before marching out the door.

"Now, Mr. Clark-" the dwarf sneezed all over the counter, "- Mr. Clark! If you cannot control your secretions you are to be in a mask. You run a pharmacy and you know that. If I catch you contaminating your work surfaces again, I will report you to the DOH myself and you will be replaced." Rumple, leaning again on Mr. Gold's knowledge of state bureaucracy, had had enough of that dripping and icky little man. "And wipe that up, now."

Clark scurried off to do what he was told.

Mr. Gold withdrew the notepad on a clip board from under his arm and began taking notes. Clipboards were essential equipment of intimidation and nothing stated in bold print "official" like a note-taking, suited person with a clipboard.

When Sneezy had finished cleaning up after himself he peered over the surgical mask with wide rheumy, if terrified, eyes at Rumple Gold. "Shall we begin the tour, Mr. Gold?"

It came out an undignified squeak. Rumple could not be bothered to feel sorry for him. Mr. Gold, showing a confidence he had not since Graham's death raised his chin and declared, "Yes, let's begin with your compounding room. Where do I bunny up?"

"Right this way, Mr. Gold."

Rumple almost said something aloud, but remembered he could just ask Mr. Gold in their head.

Did you just say bunny up?

Yes, when you see it, it will make sense. Oh, but you weren't raised with the Easter Bunny were you? Mr. Gold smirked at him.

Mr. Gold thrust his suit jacket at Clark. It would have been a respectable height for a hand off for any normal sized person, but Mr. Gold made no adjustment to his movement to compensate for Clark's vertical deficiency. That meant the jacket was shoved unceremoniously at his face. Rumple did not miss the hurt and angry expression they received for Mr. Gold's slight.

Their own height would impress no one and Rumple frowned inwardly at Mr. Gold for this behavior. He had been on the receiving end often enough.

You can't be serious Dark One, did you just chastise me for slighting the guy who sneezes on my pills at every single visit?

Mr. Gold undid his cufflinks, pocketed them and rolled up his sleeves before making use of the sticky mat at the entrance to the antechamber. Mr. Gold masked them, as he had demanded Clark do a moment ago, before he took the hat offered him by Clark and tucked their locks neatly within so no hair protruded. Rumple watched them in the mirror in some astonishment. 

All of this to go in a room?

Yes, you stone-aged hedge druid, it's called the germ theory of disease. You probably believe in leaches and bad humors.

Rumple could tell Mr. Gold had enjoyed the dig at his expense but Rumple had to concede the point having been awake in the Land Without Magic long enough to recognize certain advancements.

"You need to wipe your cane, put a bootie on the end of it and then scrub up to your elbows. Use the brush packs above the sink." Rumple recognized another of Snow White's dwarves, Doc maybe, as the clean room tech. "Clark will put your booties on if you can't, but you can't step over the tape line in your street shoes."

Mr. Gold complied. He pulled on some of those tight blue gloves before scrubbing his cane stem to stern. The bootie he attached to the tip with a liberal amount of tape. Rumple liked the hand wash. Mr. Gold took his time in thoroughly scrubbing his hands and arms in the scrub sink. The soap and friction of the brush pinked his skin and created a very appealing lather. Mr. Gold rinsed, then paper-toweled and held his hands in the air.

In the mean time, Clark had placed his cane on the table on the clean side of the line. It now lay on a table out of reach, but Clark was prepared for his unspoken complaint. Rumple Gold accepted the support under one elbow which allowed him to get to a chair placed just beside the line on the dirty side.

Then Clark, controlling the sleeves carefully, unfurled a white papery garment.

"Lift your feet please, Mr. Gold."

Rumple Gold allowed the dwarfs to dress him. Blue shoe covers- booties- followed by bunny suit. 

"Don't put your feet down on the dirty side, hold them up until I tell you." Clark ordered and Mr. Gold obeyed easily. Clark slid the bunny suit most of the way up his thighs before swiveling the chair and indicating for him to stand up on the clean side of the line.

"Now don't step over onto the dirty side, but turn around so I can finish."

Mr. Gold again accepted the assistance at his elbow to turn around. Clark sleeved him, keeping his own hands away from Rumple Gold's clean ones. Rumple tried to ignore the sensation of Clark's hands grasping the groin of the bunny suit to zip it up for him. He did not touch him of course, but still.

Doc, Mr. Gold did not know the other dwarf's fake name, addressed him then, "We don't need you to know how to put these on aseptically because you won't be touching anything while you are in there. I will make sure of that. Just don't touch the table with your hands, only the paper where it's open for you."

On the table next to the sliding glass door which lead into the clean room proper lay a pair of gloves on unfolded paper packaging. The gloves themselves had the cuffs rolled curiously toward the fingers. Rumple wondered why, but Mr. Gold ignored him and reached carefully for the folded edge of the cuff of one of the gloves. Mr. Gold was showing off now. He had been taught to do this and Rumple could feel his smug satisfaction at showing off a competency Rumple did not have. The effort clearly paid off as Doc raised a seemingly impressed eyebrow. Mr. Gold frowned, then took up his cane knowing that doing so invalidated his efforts, and followed the tech into the clean room.

Rumple caught their reflection in the glass door just before it opened. Mr. Gold had been correct, the paper suit was ridiculous, much like the image of the Easter Bunny Mr. Gold had shared with him upon mention of this indignity.

Where did you learn all that? Rumple asked his compatriot silently trying not to seem impressed, though he knew there was little point as Mr. Gold was privy to all his emotions anyway.

And you said I watch too much TV. You would probably lump medical dramas in with procedurals.

I most certainly would.

Rumple made a soft disgusted noise in the back of his throat,

"Mr. Gold?" Doc queried worriedly.

"Carry on," Rumple said to cover his slip.

To Rumple, the clean room did not look all that special. It looked like a room with racks of little paper boxes and several metal work benches with glass stopping at about elbow height of the worker. Vials, syringes and stickers lay within waiting for Doc to finish the tour and resume work.

Mr. Gold spoke up, "I am gratified not to see any dust in here this time."

"Oh no, Mr. Gold, we are very careful about cleaning and we do not bring products in here that might create lint." Doc's tone bordered on whining obsequiousness.

"Glad to hear it. I would hate to have to shut this place down to protect Storybrooke's supply of medication from contamination over such carelessness. How often do you have your hoods inspected?"

"Every six months."

"Great, and when was the last time?"

"Um. You know Mr. Gold I really can't recall. But I'm certain it's fine, we're on a regular schedule."

Mr. Gold approached the nearest hood and peered at the sticker. The date indicated the last date of service as November 1, 1983. Rumple smirked for both of them, that had been way too easy. Regina's little oversight had just provided him exactly what he needed.

"Every six months you say, if that is the case, why does the last date of service show 1983?" Rumple turned to smile at the floundering dwarf only to realize that his smile could not be seen through the mask. However, even only able to see Doc's eyes, Rumple was fairly certain the message had sunk home.

"You'll have to talk to Clark about that, he takes care of the HEPA filter replacement and all the maintenance schedules. I just do the compounding." The little man had tears in his eyes and his voice shook so much he was difficult to understand.

"I assure you I will," Mr. Gold answered flatly. To Doc's credit, the rest of the clean room seemed to be in order.

Rumple had begun to sweat in their bunny suit by the time Mr. Gold pronounced them finished with that part of the work. Getting out was a lot easier than getting in. He threw all that hot, itchy, paper/cloth garbage directly in the trash and made a passing attempt at salvaging his hair in the mirror before rejoining Clark in the main pharmacy work room.

"1983, Clark?" Mr. Gold invaded his personal space to stare down at him.

"What? I swear I just had them out here the other month-"

"When?"

"I-I just can't seem to recall. I can call them and ask-"

"That won't be necessary. What is necessary is that you call them and get them to come and service those hoods as soon as possible."

"Yes Mr. Gold."

"Now, since that was in such disarray, you will walk me through each and every workflow in this pharmacy to my satisfaction." Rumple found himself reveling in this.

Four hours later, Rumple Gold had their list of medications for one Maurice French in his head. They left behind a very pale, very exhausted dwarf. Back in his shop, Rumple quickly wrote down everything to ensure he would not forget any of them. He slipped the paper into his pocket and then strode out into the blustery January air toward Granny's and a late lunch.

Mr. Gold filed his report to the City that afternoon detailing various minor offenses and saving the best for last. He pushed send and then sat back in his chair. His den at home definitely lived up to Regina's promise of comfort. Antique wooden furniture: a desk, a well-padded chair, a hutch for booze and sufficient book cases for his law books and, Rumple guessed from Mr. Gold's days as a student, an old copy of a physician's drug guide, 1983, no surprise there.

Hoping he was very lucky, Rumple looked up Warfarin.

Excellent. No need for the suspicion of two heart attacks within three months in a small town when a catastrophic bleed would do just fine. Even if the zealot did not die from it, his destruction would suit Rumple's purposes. Perhaps even better. 

How could anyone believe so thoroughly in the drivel peddled by those ignoramus clerics as to hand over their pregnant daughter? It should not have mattered who they thought did the deed, Belle's obvious inner light had been enough to illuminate even the blind. No better person had he ever met. Rumple choked on his rage all over again. She had certainly dazzled his eyes, but he was no better than Moe because her light had not been enough to keep him from casting her out in the first place.

Maybe just a little better. Moe threw his daughter and grandchild to the wolves. Rumple had just been afraid of her. Afraid she would keep him from his own child.

Mr. Gold frowned at Rumple, "Seems to me a good argument against having children at all. What a lot of grief."

"Oh shut up, what would you know of it anyway?"

"Only what you do." Mr. Gold leaned them back in the chair, "Do you really think you can find him? Your son?"

"I will find him." Rumple did not care about obstacles or rules or time, he would find his son.

"And when you do?"

"I will tell him how sorry I am, how much I love him."

Such a soft touch, Mr. Gold seemed to have tried to stifle that thought, but Rumple heard it anyway.

Privacy in his own head had never been something he thought about much, but now he vigorously missed what ought to have been a given.

You and me both, Dark One.

Mr. Gold fell silent as Rumple remembered how Baelfire's baby hair smelled, the sound of his voice calling for his papa and a million other small things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far we've been largely cannon-peripheral in SB, we are now officially cannon-divergent! So did my inner nerd chase you away?? I hope not. If not, you can come and follow me on Tumblr @theoneandonlylittlebird!


	13. Chapter 13

The soonest Clark had been able to schedule the needed maintenance had been six weeks from Rumple's faux audit of the Dark Star Pharmacy. Four weeks had passed and Rumple had begun to worry. He could not wait much longer because the curse was weakening more every day and once it broke, this chance would be gone. He did not know how long he had before that happened, but he could feel the end of the curse coming like an itch under his skin.

Their shower had been curtailed this morning because yesterday had required more walking on account of some severely delinquent tenants. Walking in the winter cold helped Rumple Gold's mood not at all. It had been bad enough to make him seek out the pills and whiskey again. While Rumple had been careful to avoid being hungover, the end result had been being forced to spend time soaking his foot this morning instead of taking care of matters as had become their usual.

Grumpy, though a dwarf moniker, definitely described Rumple this morning.

In addition, Moe French had not paid up on his loan yesterday by the time Rumple Gold had left the shop, which meant dealing with him today. One way or another.

Rumple would have preferred to have finished up with that loose end a few weeks ago. He did not give a gods' damn about the money. But no, Clark had a service contract which had to be honored and the company could not come sooner. Rumple Gold had even called himself in an attempt to encourage matters. To no avail. Mr. Gold did not own that particular building, an oversight to be corrected at their earliest convenience.

All of that left Rumple feeling heavy and tight, and cranky- no, right past cranky and on to howling pissed, as he thrust through the door of his shop and all but slammed it behind him.

He clutched the paper to-go bag from Granny's between cane and fingers as he repocketed his keys and he caught it before the paper could slip from his grip. A sausage croissant sandwich lay within. The morning could not be all bad. He would have to make his own tea in the back.

"You've encouraged an unfortunate habit in us, you know." Mr. Gold told him once they were shut away from the street.

"I believe you were the start of it. And I don't hear you complaining, unless we have to skip for some reason." Rumple Gold's underthings were not laying quite right this morning. He felt crowded. 

Rumple took the electric kettle out the back door to rinse and refill it in the bathroom sink. As he worked, he leaned his front against the cool porcelain fixture.

"I could just take care of that for us while we're in here-" Mr. Gold started.

"No. Not at work. Besides, I find, having had many more years than you to appreciate this fact, that discomfort is never a thing to be wasted. Especially not when it can be visited upon those who deserve it."

"Like Mr. French, for example."

"Precisely," Rumple smiled at Mr. Gold in the mirror, but it did not reach the flat brown of their eyes.

"He could have dropped off his payment in the slot after we left, you know." 

"Why do you think I haven't checked? I am hoping he hasn't. And if he has, I want to hold on to my feelings of discomfiture as long as possible. It will make release all the sweeter when we ultimately, take care of things, as you suggest." Rumple replaced the lid on the full kettle and retrieved his cane. Away from the sink, he found their chat had not alleviated this issue at all. In fact, if they were not careful, Rumple might be forced to accept Gold's advice which he did not wish to do. He wanted his edge today.

"Don't embarrass me," Rumple said sharply to his counterpart before opening the bathroom door.

You're the one who gets excited by the infliction of your wrath upon the worthy, Mr. Gold thought.

Now, now, dearie, do not confuse excitement with using all tools available. I may be the Dark One, but vengeance isn't on the list of what gets to me. Not as such, anyway. I'm beginning to think it does get to you though, Rumple returned silently as he reentered the shop's office and plugged in the kettle.

It was a pu-erh kind of morning and Mr. Gold had nothing to say to Rumple's barb. They were both looking forward to the eventual murder of Moe French, other thoughts aside, and stoked that fire while they waited for the kettle to boil, steeped their tea and finally drank it down. The breakfast sandwich had been mercifully still warm enough to be enjoyable by the time all was said and done. The caffeine sang arias in Rumple Gold's blood by the time he finally deigned to check the mail slot in the side door.

There were several payments that did come in over night, but none from Mr. French. Delightful.

"You see," Rumple said in their still empty shop, "Now we have had our tea, our breakfast and we are in the right frame of mind to go and handle one Maurice French."

Mr. Gold adjusted their tie in a mirror and pulled out his phone to call Mr. Dove. His services were needed.

To say their day was unsatisfying did not begin to cover it.

Dark had fallen and still no call from Miss Swan asking him to come to the station and pick up Belle's teacup.

Rumple Gold paced over the top of the detritus that had been his living room. He had not bothered with turning on the light and instead only the streetlight coming in through the window illuminated the trashed room. 

Mr. Gold had been incensed upon discovery of the gouged door-frame where it had been pried open and they had been violated, but he had spent their evening trying to convince Rumple to let him at least vacuum the glass out of the rug. Rumple massaged the gun in their pocket. Broken glass crunched under foot.

Rumple kicked the splintered ruin of one of their end tables, "Enough!"

"What do you have in mind?" Mr. Gold asked carefully, as though talking to a tiger.

"No one steals from me." Rumple quit the house before Mr. Gold could convince him otherwise.

In the car, Mr. Gold entreated, "We have a plan. A good one, one that won't require any clean up. It's just a cup. And an already broken one at that."

"It's not just a cup!" Rumple yelled before slamming on the breaks. He had nearly missed a stop sign. Getting pulled over now would be worse than an inconvenience.

The bell above the door of the Dark Star pharmacy jangled at his entry and Rumple Gold shook the snow off of himself. Rumple had spent the remainder of the drive relaxing his features as it would not do to go and purchase rope and duct tape while wearing a face like the business end of a blacksmith's hammer.

"Good evening, Clark," Rumple said almost amiably as he headed for the back of the shop. He heard the bell again as he selected what he would need. He had to figure out where French would be hiding out, since Miss Swan had yet to locate him.

So consumed with this task was he that he let Mr. Gold take care of the small talk with David until he felt Mr. Gold smile shyly as he related how lucky David was to have someone who loved him. Mr. Gold had been gazing at David through heavily lidded eyes. 

Enough of that. Rumple snatched control back with an eye roll for good measure. Gold needed to get it together.

Rumple dumped his purchases on the counter and then headed back out into the snow as soon as he completed the purchase.

The Cadillac drifted slowly down Main Street on instinct. A glance toward the Rabbit Hole showed him Grumpy on his way inside when it hit him. He parked in the alley beside his shop.

Rumple headed for the docks on foot. It was a snowy night and cold, no one who had another place to go would be spending the night on a boat, except perhaps one man.

Though bitterly cold, thankfully the surf was not up tonight. Cables chimed softly against masts as the boats rocked and the snow disappeared into the deep. The marina lights provided a dizzying display where they reflected in the black water. Rumple took his time looking out over the sleeping boats. Up and down they bobbed, rubbing against their buoys gently. The quiet of falling snow muffled the city so he focused on the sounds the water made. And he watched, waiting for his eyes to find what his brain was fairly certain they would.

But all the boats seemed dark, abandoned.

He would need to walk among them and listen then, because where else would French hide? The man had friends at the cannery and among the fishermen. Trusting his hunch, Rumple Gold turned away from the marina in order to retrieve French's delivery truck from the impound lot two blocks away. He did not want to risk stuffing the bulky ex-king in his own trunk. Having his car parked at his shop gave him some measure of cover in any case, thin though it may be.  
He parked the truck in a dark and cramped alley earlier in the day, before French's little indiscretion.

Trying to walk quietly on a wooden dock with a cane proved no small feat, so progress was slow. An hour went by as he combed the marina, boat by boat, dock by dock. A few steps, stop, listen and look. Nothing, silent and empty.

Rumple Gold's breath fogged the air and his gloves were no longer sufficient to keep his hands warm. He stopped and flexed them several times to get the blood moving again. The night had grown quieter still as the little town of Storybrooke wound down its Valentine's Day festivities and the snowfall had begun to result in accumulation.

They focused carefully on their quarry. In spite of his earlier misgivings, Mr. Gold assisted readily enough and though they had but one body, two minds truly did peak out from behind a solitary set of eyes. Mr. Gold helped Rumple remember to stay out of direct lighting when possible and told him where the lone security camera was so as to avoid it. They hunted well together.

Half an hour later, the flurries picked up in earnest. Truthfully, Rumple had begun to despair. His feet were both cold and though well made, his shoes had never been made for the purpose and did not provide adequate protection for hours spent moving slowly in snowy weather.

And that was when he heard it.

A muffled cough, barely audible above the soft lapping of the wave action, coming from the direction of several boats down the dock from his present location. He moved slowly and quietly over the wooden planks toward where he thought he had heard the noise. But there was nothing, no light, no further movement or sound.

Had he really heard it?

But then he noticed something. The snow had only just begun to stick to the docks themselves and the boats had a bare dusting coating their horizontal surfaces. Except that one.

That one, right there, had a cabin that was only wet.

That meant heat. Boat batteries may be silent and the water certainly covered many small electronic sounds, but that boat was warmer than all the rest.

The boat in question was a sailboat, a pleasure craft with a solitary mast and sleek design. Not so large as to be particularly ostentatious, but definitely large enough for a couple to go on few days' worth of trip somewhere. He wondered who owned the Paradise.

His breathing picked up speed and even cold as he was, the rush of exhilaration began to warm him again. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears in the quiet of the Storybrooke night.

At that point another quandary presented itself. How was he going to get on the boat undetected? It had a little rope ladder hanging over the side, but the boat tugged against its moorings and had drifted a good two feet away from the dock.

Mr. Gold thought the water looked a bit chilly for a swim this evening.

Rumple agreed. Best not to fall in. So he stopped to watch and listen and think.

This close he could hear soft snoring from within. A good sign. But what if it was not even French? It could be some poor fisherman with no home but his boat. Those did exist in Storybrooke. Ex-princes had been favorite targets of her majesty.

The snoring was even and regular. He could get the drop on whomever it was even if he rocked the boat getting aboard. So long as he did not make too much noise doing it. Assuming they were a sound enough sleeper.

A lot of ifs.

You know, we could just wait for the sheriff to take care of this problem, Mr. Gold offered.

Rumple did not bother replying. He would just have to be quiet enough to verify the identity of the sleeper before waking them.

Rumple took a deep breath and released it silently in a great cloud of steam. The snow was accumulating in his hair and melting it slowly flat against his skull. His ears had passed the point of cold and graduated to steady pain. The occasional frigid rivulet coursed down under his collar. A decidedly unpleasant evening, perfect for unpleasant business. He would most assuredly visit the entirety of his displeasure upon Mr. French. Once he could be certain that the occupant of this boat was the correct pudgy former monarch.

A glance down at his cane, then back at the boat and he knew what to do. The cane had seemed an obstacle at first, but now it seemed helpful, if not essential.

A study in care, Rumple extended his cane, handle first toward the deck railings and hooked one of them near the rope ladder. So far no noise. On a soft exhale he began to pull the boat slowly, ever so slowly toward him. It came against the current with a little effort, but not an insurmountable one.

The Paradise came to rest against its bumpers smoothly with barely a shock and the snoring continued unabated. Taking careful hold of the rope ladder with one hand he braced against the current which, slight as it was would still erase any progress he had made if he let go, and eased his cane through his belt. Not comfortable, but workable.

And that was when he realized his error. Sure, he could get up onto the boat but how would he get back down with a prisoner? At all? He could not jump, not in any way. And even though he had duct tape in one pocket of his overcoat and rope in the other, he could not throw French onto the docks with French the larger man by far.

Magic would be so useful right now, Rumple grumbled inwardly to Mr. Gold.

Who saved the day. At the end of each dock was a gangway used for loading and unloading cargo because most of the boats here really were working boats and large drums of fresh water were loaded and unloaded daily. Perfect.

Rumple released the Paradise carefully to pull again against her moorings once more while he made slow and nearly silent progress back down the dock.

Fortunately for him, the gangway available weighed little more than an aluminum ladder and so while awkward, he could carry it. That Storybrooke was a small town which retired early had never seemed more a blessing than it did at that moment because no one's prying eyes dashed his plans.

Back facing the Paradise again, Rumple steeled himself on the verge of action, at the point of no return. He had to have it back. Rage threatened to boil up again, but Rumple took several breaths to put it away. Calm and focus would help him now, rage would not. Use the tools at hand; Mr. Gold's organized mind and his own patience. He only had to keep it under wraps just long enough, he promised himself. Later he would use his rage as he did every other tool at his disposal.

The sleeper's breath caught in their throat and Rumple froze. Thankfully, after some truly ghastly gurgles and scrapes, the rhythmic snores resumed.

Though the gangway was not terribly heavy, the further away from his body it got, the heavier it felt and the harder it was to control. It took all his strength to lower it silently against the deck of the Paradise and settle the hooks into the lip of the hull. Wishing again for magic, Rumple hoped no waves decided to make a sudden appearance as he gingerly made his way up without a railing to help him balance on his ankle which was far beyond cold and stiff by now. With both feet nearly numb, he was definitely risking a bath in the deep, murky waters of the Storybrooke Marina if he faltered.

The snoring continued unabated.

Unfortunately, Rumple's shoes were not designed with boats in mind and they made decided clicks on the hollow deck of the little sailboat no matter how gingerly he stepped. But his rubber tipped cane had no such flaw.

Entry to the cabin required two steps down, but boats tended to be equipped with hand rails and the Paradise was no exception. How convenient. At the door he paused, listening again. Still snoring. 

Last chance, Mr. Gold whispered in their head, as if that would make any difference.

Rumple ignored him and quietly opened the cabin door to slip inside. A gust of heat rushed passed him as he crossed the threshold into the cabin. Not wanting to wake his prey with an obvious and decidedly stiff draft, Rumple pulled the hinged door mostly to, but left enough of a gap so it could be elbowed opens without difficult.

The warm cabin eased the tension in his body and Rumple took a moment to make use of the abundant hand holds and flex his ankle. The relief was minimal, but soothing none the less.

The sailboat came complete with a tiny galley and head which he had to pass by to enter the sleeping cabin, also tiny. Being slight did have its advantages and there on the bed, crumpled up uncomfortably, slept a very big and tall man: Maurice French. The light coming in through the windows from the marina played on his slack jawed and drooling visage and Rumple smiled to himself. The tightness in his shoulders release and he took a calming breath.

If the man was asleep enough, he might just be able to tie his hands before he woke him. And duct tape his mouth. Rumple wrinkled his nose at the thought of touching the man's saliva though. Not to be helped though, needs must. Could not have Mr. French caterwauling fit to wake the dead. Definitely not.

With the rope from his pocket. Rumple neatly knotted a sliding loop into one end. Then came the tricky part. With the gun in one hand and his cane leaning against the cabinetry to his right, Rumple began the slow process of binding Moe's hands.

The cramped quarters paid off as Moe could not sprawl out. He lay tucked in on himself with one hand dangling over the edge of the bed and the other up near his face. The first hand was fairly easy, he could thread the loop over it without difficulty and did so, the second hand- the one near his face- would be a bit trickier.

Rather than grasping Moe's hand with his own relatively cold, leather encased hand, Rumple pulled the covered slowly up just enough to cover the man's wrist. Moe shifted a little and snuffled between snores in his sleep. Telling himself to be calm, Rumple waited until the snores began again. Then he grabbed the wrist ever so gently through the blanket and shifted it over the mattress, just until Moe began to stir again, at which point he stopped and waited again.

It took three more repetitions of this, waiting longer in between each repetition, to bring Moe's hands together and into the loop which he only tightened enough to keep the sleeping man from pulling away before taking a risk and setting the gun down long enough to tighten and secure his knots. He wrapped the end of the rope around a hand-hold and hastily regained the gun. He tucked the end of the rope into his gun hand and reached for the duct tape.

Upon laying it amid Moe's warm covers he realized that the tape was going to be quite loud when he unwound enough of it for Moe's slimy and still glistening mouth. Speaking of which, he used the edge of the cover to slowly wipe away the offending saliva.

The spur of the moment nature of this decision told, now, as he thought through how best to execute his plan. Rumple was a great planner and maybe deciding to do this after effectively no forethought had not been terribly advisable. 

Mr. Gold nodded and raised their eyebrow mockingly. 

Not helpful! Rumple chastised his counterpart.

Everything was so much simpler with magic. But he was in it now and no going back. So Rumple shimmied out of one glove and proceeded to pick the duct tape apart bit by bit using his teeth until he could could pull a slightly longer strip, slowly, without too much noise. Rumple replaced his glove once he had liberated the short length of tape necessary.

The blessed oaf snored on.

Until Rumple slapped the tape over his gaping maw and pulled hard on the rope wrapped around the hand-hold.

Moe startled awake with gasping snorts and coughs through his nose. He sputtered and tried to cry out but could not. The rope held fast with Rumple leaning his weight against it while the huge man thrashed and kicked briefly until his foot collided with the cabinetry and he howled through his nose in pain. Rumple was glad he had taken the extra care to tape the buffoon's mouth.

"Shut the hell up, you sniveling swine fucker." Rumple menaced as he brought the gun to bear on the now fully awake ex-king.

Moe French blew heavy, terrified breaths through his nose as he stared wide eyed at Rumple. At Rumple's gun.

"To start with, you could make this easy on yourself. You know what I want, is it here?" Rumple growled at him.

Moe shook his head violently.

"Are you lying?" Rumple brought the gun to bear, right in the ex-king's pudgy face.

He shook his head, whole body trembling as he stared at the barrel of the gun, trying to put distance between himself and the gleaming metal but Rumple held him fast.

"It's the hard way then." French whimpered and shook his head, crying. 

"Here's how this is going to work," Rumple sing-songed softly, "We're going to spend some quality time together, you and I. You see, I've got this little cabin, nice place really, out in the woods where no one will hear you, no matter how much you scream. That means getting off the boat first." 

Gesturing with the gun, Rumple hissed, "Get up."

French, restrained by his hands to the hand-hold shimmied to sitting. To Rumple's dismay, the man wore no pants, at all. Mr. Gold chuckled at Rumple's sensibilities.

You're kidnapping the guy and your worried about pants? Mr. Gold had the audacity to snicker in their head.

Shut up.

French could not stand upright in the low cabin, unlike Rumple, due to his excessive height.

Rumple sneered in disgust, "Can't parade you around pantsless and barefoot, can I? Well, I could, but not even I am that cruel. Ok, I am, but I don't care to see you prancing around in your underwear, you're not my type. I'm going to allow you enough rope to dress yourself in a minute, but let me be perfectly clear. I would not find it inconvenient for you to end up dead this evening, so if you think that would be undesirable, I suggest you cooperate, fully. Pants, socks and shoes. Now."

French nodded his head rapidly, eyes swimming with fresh tears at the mention of his potential death.

Rumple fed enough of the rope from the hand-hold to give French enough space to comply. He did. "Coat? It's snowing out there and you've just got that smelly tee-shirt on." French gestured behind Rumple to the galley. "Fine, pick it up on your way out."

When he had finished dressing, Rumple reasserted the gun at French's face and reached underhand to grab the rope from the side of the hand-hold closest to French so he could free it. Rumple retrieved his cane while still holding the rope and so, cane and rope in one hand and gun in the other, Rumple slowly backed out until he felt the cabin door against his heels. He elbowed the door open to a blast of swirling snow and frozen air at his back which he did his best to ignore. French however hunched against the cold. Rumple nodded to the coat draped on the seat cushions across from the tiny stove. French slowly reached for it.

Satisfied, Rumple carefully backed up the steps one at a time leaning on his cane and bracing against the railings as he did so. He never took his eyes off French who looked more like he was going to wet himself than put up a fight. French followed him slowly up to the deck like a terrified cow with his bound hands clutching his coat before him. They were both fortunate it was a calm night, else one or both could have fallen and broken bones.

"Toss the coat here," Rumple ordered and French tossed the coat to the bench seating in front of the helm. French started to shiver in the swirling snow. "Don't move. I am going to put this over your shoulders, but I swear, I will shoot you where you stand if you budge a hair. I'll have no trouble getting this all cleaned and tidy, so don't fret about that. Either way, I get what I want. The better you cooperate, the longer you live."

French nodded, tears rolling down his face and his nose leaking abhorrently. His muffled sobs steamed the air around his face.

Rumple let out a deep sigh and maneuvered around behind French to toss the coat one-handed up onto his shoulders. Good enough.

"Clarity is essential to making sure no accidents happen on our little journey, understand?" Moe nodded mutely, "As such, I need you to listen very carefully as I describe what you do next. You are going to walk very slowly down that gangplank to the dock with me behind you. I'll be holding the gun, so as you don't forget about that part. When we are both on the dock, you are going to retrieve the gangplank and then replace it where it belongs, all neat and tidy. After that, you will walk beside and just ahead of me to my left. I have your van parked near here. Then we go for a ride. And you are to do all of this quietly. Is that clear?"

French snuffled and nodded.

"Excellent. Let's begin. After you," Rumple gestured toward the gangplank hoping vigorously that he would not lose his balance on his aching ankle. That would result in a very uncomfortable embarrassment.

Docile Moe French did exactly as instructed and Rumple chivvied him into the back of his van without incident. He did try to jerk his feet away when Rumple went to bind them, but a cold look down the barrel of his gun quieted the man. Rumple trussed him up as best he could and then pocketed the gun.

"I'll drive extra safe, now, don't you worry." 

The truth was that Rumple had not felt this in touch with his curse in ages and alignment with the darkness was always easier than working his plans around it. Being the villain came easily, naturally where careful planning with a basis in fatherly love did not. The curse seemed to sharpen his mind when he bent it toward cruelty, malice, deceit, ruthlessness, any of those things. It was when he turned his mind toward love that he often felt muddled and dark thoughts frequently intruded.

Rumple turned the heat up in the truck as much for himself as for French.

In the relative serenity of the cab of the delivery truck, Mr. Gold piped up in their head.

I take it back about you not being terrifying as the Dark One. I take it all back.

I'm many things, terrifying is only one of them. As is being the Dark One. I have lived a very, very long time for that reason. I know how to use what is at hand and that includes myself. And you.

Rumple smirked as he looked in the rear view mirror to glimpse French's wide and staring eyes. 

No one steals from me. And no one hurts those I love and lives to tell about it.

Mr. Gold sounded almost diffident with his next query.

Are you going to kill him now?

Images surfaced of Mr. Gold cracking kneecaps and shins with his cane over unpaid debts, but never anything so far as would require clean up. Mr. Gold had never actually killed anyone. Good to know.

Rumple smiled and relived a series of his own kills for Mr. Gold's benefit.

Nervousness crept forward from the recesses of Mr. Gold, though he clearly tried to suppress it.

On an academic level, Rumple found it interesting that he could feel his curse even here in the Land Without Magic. He felt it as a sort of resonance, a resonance with harmony to his darker thoughts.

Rumple drove carefully. Very carefully and he took a discrete route out of town. He obeyed every stoplight, every sign and always used his turn indicator. The roads were beginning to turn from slush to slippery, but though it might appear otherwise outwardly, he did not care much for the deteriorating roads conditions. His only care was for not attracting undue attention.

That and making the trip just a little bit longer for Mr. French's benefit. No need to waste perfectly good anticipation, yet another tool to be used.

As such, the trip to the cabin took a solid forty-five minutes on the backroads. When the truck came to a stop and Rumple threw the parking break into place, French's sobs were audible again.

Perfect.

Way out here, the woods were deathly quiet in the falling snow. The higher altitude meant that a solid three inches had accumulated and the truck headlights lit up the surroundings like a flashlight would a mirrored room in an arcade.

When had Mr. Gold ever been to an arcade?

He had not, procedurals. Again.

The man had spent too much time watching television.

Mr. Gold objected that Storybrooke had little else to offer.

Rumple had to concede the point.

Rumple left French locked in the back of the truck and tied to the flower racks while he unlocked the front door and began making arrangements. The armchair brought a smile to his face. He hauled it to the middle of the room in front of the empty fireplace.

Mr. Gold looked at the fireplace and considered the icy darkness inside the cabin. Mr. Gold may have left enough heat on to keep the pipes from freezing, but that was it. And that did not qualify as comfortable. Rumple agreed with him silently and set to work building a fire. Mr. French would do just fine where he was until Rumple was satisfied.

Matter of fact, Rumple could see the truck rocking just slightly. He smiled. Time to invite Mr. French inside.

Back out in the snowy dark, Rumple threw open the back door of the truck gun ready.

"Settle down now, Mr. French. If I even think you might kick me, I will shoot you someplace painful." Rumple climbed up into the back of the truck. "Now that I've got you here, my chances of getting what I want from you have increased and thus, your choices have also increased. I will do my best to make myself understood, the accent, you know." Rumple sneered at the shaking man on the floor of the delivery truck. 

"You may do any of the following: choose not to cooperate- in which case I just kill you because you become useless to me, fail to follow directions completely and perfectly- in which case I will hurt you until you make a different choice, or you can comply with my every wish and this will all be over the sooner for both of us. While all three of those options suit my needs, my preference would be for you to take up the least amount of my time. Understood?" Rumple kept his voice and features calm as if explaining a simple deal.

French nodded, eyes not leaving Rumple for a second.

"Excellent. I am going to untie your feet and you are going to walk into the cabin. After that you will sit down in the chair I indicate while I retie your feet. If at any time during this process, I feel the least bit concerned that you might try to harm me or attempt to depart this idyllic scene, I will shoot you wherever convenient for me. Your job is to make me feel very comfortable-" Rumple drew out all of the syllables as he had done long ago, "- and at ease so I won't have to worry about any protracted cleaning later. Do you understand the plan as I have explained it to you?"

Again, French nodded.

Even having thoroughly threatened French, Rumple did not like having to set his cane down to slowly pick at the knots binding French's feet with quickly cooling and stiffening fingers. The heat from the drive dissipated rapidly with the back door wide open and he could not very well untie rope with his glove on. French's kicking about had tightened the knots further, making this even more difficult than it otherwise would have been. Spinning had always been about untangling, not tangling. Neither Rumple, nor Mr. Gold, had more than a basic understanding of knot work. A failing he now needed to rectify.

In spite of his outward calm and deliberate care paid to the ropes, Rumple knew that if French thought for a second he could escape, he would try it gun or no gun. Keeping his breath steady and even, Rumple insisted he himself remain in control of his own emotions. 

Mr. Gold's growing anticipation and giddiness did not help and Rumple growled at him in their head. Mr. Gold made more of an effort to be helpful and focus on the task at hand.

The rope around French's feet gave at last and he tugged on the end still attached to French's hands to jolt him into sitting up and unthread the rope through the frame at the same time.

"Move." Rumple said coldly.

With French at last inside and made fast to the chair, Rumple truly began to relax. This part, he knew how to do and had enjoyed in the past. Though, Belle had not approved, he recalled distinctly. That thought made him both uncomfortable and more determined at the same time.

Rumple set the gun down and then turned his attention to Belle's father.

Two weepy blue eyes stared back up at him from the man tied to the chair. And Rumple stared at him, unwaveringly bored into his eyes while Rumple started at the beginning in his mind.

Belle, a beacon of light in her gold dress, bravely agreed to go with him.

"You were a terrible father." Rumple stated this flatly in a voice barely above a murmur.

French was sweating, there in his chair before the fire, meeting Rumple's eyes in horrified terror. A moment went by while Rumple said nothing more before confusion became evident on French's face.

"Ah good, now you are listening. I said you were a terrible father," French shook his head in denial. Mr. Gold informed Rumple that in this land, French had no children. Fine. That made no difference. "You should never have just let her go with me. A decent parent would have done more than just stand there and snivel."

French looked panicked now. Rumple supposed that the only thing more terrifying than a kidnapper that might or might not kill him would be the insane kidnapper that might or might not kill him. Perfect.

Rumple continued on his trip down memory lane. "Me? I was not a good father either. When I was scared, I let my child go too. But that is where you and I are different. I have done everything in my power to retrieve my child in order to make up for that mistake. But not you. You cast two generations onto the pyre at a stroke because of your hate. And I had nothing to do with that! That's the worst part!"

Rumple looked toward the fire and then back at French, who had followed his eyes. The man shook head to foot.

"All that remains now is a hollow and broken remnant." Rumple left French where he was and ambled over to the warm fire. Emotion seethed in Rumple as he thought of Belle pleading with her father to spare her. Of her screams while they-

While they what? Scourges and flame? Had they beat her? Had they starved her? Deprived her of water? Had her clothes stunk of her own urine, blood stained and torn? He could only imagine the pain as her body lost her unborn passenger.

He did not even know. Maybe King Maurice did, but French, the hapless flower shop owner did not know either. Flame seemed a good place to start though.

Rumple pulled a flaming wrist sized log from the blaze he had previously set and turned back to French.

A familiar odor filled the air and a puddle appeared on the floor around the legs of the chair.

Rumple ignored that except for the tiniest of smirks as he returned his attention to the task at hand.

"In a moment, I am going to allow you to speak and you are going to say two sentences. The first is where it is and the second is who told you to take it. Do you understand?" Rumple held the burning log casually at his side as if it were a picnic basket. Its smoke began to fill the air with a rich scent that only came from the honesty of clean burning wood.

French stared at the log, not even able to meet Rumple's gaze anymore.

Not a problem. Rumple came to stand beside the ex-king and flicked his coat aside with the extended fingers of his cane hand to reveal French's bare flesh below the scant covering of the tee-shirt. Whimpers and thrashing began which Rumple ignored for the moment.

He waved the now smoldering and glowing coals just above the fine hairs on French's arm. They sizzled and burned away.

"Be still." That command was enough, but Rumple stood on the ex-king's smaller toes with the heel of his shoe and all his weight. Pitiful wails stifled by the duct tape echoed around the small room but French was holding still. Rumple leaned his cane against the ex-kings trembling arm and brought his face down to be at eye level with French. "Do you remember the rules? Cooperate and we are done. Anything else means pain." French nodded.

"Now where is it and who told you to take it?"

Rumple ripped the tape forcibly off French's maw and the man shrieked as it tore some skin from his lip as well.

"It wasn't my fault!" French cried.

"That's not a good beginning." Rumple murmured. He casually allowed the log to drop onto French's arm.

Screams deafened Rumple for a moment as cooking smells filled the air. Not something he thought he might want to dine on, but flesh is flesh when seared.

Rumple removed the log after a slow count of five. The screams did not stop. French's face had turned lobster red, tears and sweat intermingled and he howled on.

Rumple imagined his pregnant Belle's face twisted just as her father's was now as the cries he heard in the room were suddenly hers.

Rumple retrieved his cane, threw the log in the general direction of the fire and bellowed, "Not my fault? Not my fault? Your fault! Not mine! Yours! It's your fault!"

With that he took his cane by the end and swung it at Maurice's upper arm. The sickening crack could barely be heard above the screams, both his and Maurice's. Rumple took aim at his legs, first one then the other. Before long the handle of his cane connected with ribs and-

"You had her love! You shut her out! She's gone. Now she's gone forever and she's not coming back. It's your fault. It's your fault! Not mine-"

"Stop!" A hand held his fast as he was coming around for another swing. "Enough!"

Rumple came back to himself in that moment as he recognized Sheriff Swan's voice. Hot tears coursed down his face as he half turned to face her. She gripped his arm like a vice and he heaved ragged breaths as he stared into her eyes.

"Enough." Swan said again and he relaxed letting his arm go limp at his side and his cane roll away on the floor. He saw her eyes stray to an unconscious Moe French. "Did you kill him?"

"I don't know." Rumple mumbled. And he did not know. How many blows had he landed? Had he caused fatal bleeding already? How long had he spent beating the man into the bloody mess he saw tied to that chair?

A glance at his fallen cane showed him the gold handle turned brassy in the firelight by blood.

Mr. Gold spoke up in his head for the first time in what seems like hours. His voice was very soft.

If you killed him, you will never find your son.

A whimper escaped Rumple at that, knowing it was true.

But then he saw it, Maurice still breathed. Rumple let out a ragged sob and doubled over. He would have hit the floor if Emma had not caught him.

The next few moments were a blur of flashing lights, the tense voices of the paramedics as they carted off Moe French's unconscious body and then they were outside standing by Emma's squad car.

"That reaction was about more than stealing. You said something about how he hurt her? Is someone in trouble? Maybe I can help."

"I'm afraid you got that wrong, sheriff. Now, if you'll excuse me."

"Oh no. You're coming with me. You really don't want to cooperate?"

Rumple said nothing as Emma clapped him in irons.

Mr. Gold hissed at him, you better hope he lives, you miserable bastard. There's only so much I can do as your lawyer. I have no wish to spend the rest of my days in state penn because of you.

Rumple cracked a tiny smile out of view of the sheriff. My counsel is in my head, guess I won't need to call anyone.

There's a monster in my head and nothing I can do about it, Mr. Gold lamented sarcastically.

Emma locked him in the back of her car while she finished up.

It felt like an eternity later before Emma shut the door and buckled herself in. "You're very lucky Mr. Gold. They tell me he will live, that he's just passed out from pain."

"You've got a funny definition of lucky."

"And you have a funny definition of justice."

"Spare me, Miss Swan."

Rumple felt her eyes on him through the rearview mirror but he continued to look out the window.

Mr. Gold piped up.

I have to say our original plan was much more promising. You've made a right hash of this. I can probably get us off, since he's going to live, but we might have to do some community service or other nonsense because you could not hold it together.

"Shut it," Rumple hissed.

"What was that, Mr. Gold?" Swan had pulled the car out onto the road and glanced back at him.

"Nothing, Miss Swan. I don't wish to converse."

"Well maybe I do. I'm pretty worried about what happened back there."

"I'm sure." Rumple grumbled at the window he faced. The handcuffs were very uncomfortable to sit against.

"You've got a lot of rage for a pawnshop owner and a landlord. I mean I know everyone is afraid of you, but no one has come even close to describing anything like what I just saw. I'm going to find out, you know, so you may as well tell me."

"I very much doubt that," Rumple hissed.

"What was that? What did he do?"

Stop talking, Mr. Gold advised sternly. As your lawyer I must advise you to shut the fuck up.

"He stole, Miss Swan. You know that." Rumple defied his counsel. 

"I'm not buying it, Mr. Gold."

"You buy whatever you like, dearie." Rumple snapped back at her.

"If someone needs help, you've got to tell me."

Rumple took his counsel's advice for a change and did not crack his teeth the rest of the ride to the station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do apologize for the protracted wait for this update. Life happened... I have to say, this chapter was difficult, if fun, to write because writing these kinds of violent encounters is quite contrary to my nature and I had to go to a very uncomfortable place to do so. I don't know how other authors feel about this, but for me, I was in the room wreaking havoc on another human being and that was a horrible thing to do. That it was also a fun exercise causes me other doubts...
> 
> This fic is eligible for the TEAs this year and, if you are so inclined, I would appreciate a nomination for Best Dark One and Best Mr. Gold (because I don't know which of those my Rumple Gold fits into.) I am very proud of Rumple Gold as a unique character and I have put a lot of effort into making him special. I haven't seen his like anywhere in my Rumbelle reading to date. I would appreciate your consideration. Thanks!


	14. Chapter 14

The light stabbed him through his eyelids and Mr. Gold found himself in a foul temper. The photo shoot the night before, early morning by the time they got to that part, had been thoroughly humiliating and he sure as hell had not had enough sleep before the morning light streamed in through the curtainless windows.

Emma had deprived him of his tie. There were no restroom facilities in his cell and the bed left a lot to be desired, lumpy and hard with one thin all but useless blanket. This was all Rumple's fault.

Mr. Gold felt naked. Exposed. On display. Mr. Gold had never been imprisoned before and restless anxiety attacked his stomach. Organs could not actually rearrange themselves. They could not.

Rumple did not give a damn. Of course not. It would not be the first time that man had ignored his discomfort in favor of an irritating aloofness.

No, Rumple stared around the room with an eerie calm settling over his part of their mind. Perhaps this calm had allowed their current shared perspective. Neither one seemed fully in control at the moment and Rumple contented himself with drifting. 

Apathetic bastard. Mr. Gold did not enjoy being screwed over. In fact, the avoidance of being screwed over was a pillar in his temple of values. Maybe the central pillar, right next to the alter of getting his due.

Their arrangement had been almost tolerable until Rumple's little hissy fit of a stunt last night. The prick was going to drag them both into hell and there was little he could do about it.

Miss Swan had not arrived yet, unsurprising considering the late night they had had. By the time Swan had finished their booking last night, it had gone four in the morning. 

The clock on the wall indicated just seven-thirty-five.

Rumple, for his part, did not want to wake up and persisted in his drifting state in spite of Mr. Gold's fretting.

And Mr. Gold did not deny he was fretting. He had never been in jail before. Jail was where he came to pick up Leroy after a bender. This side of the bars was for drunks and junkies and murders and rapists. People got beaten up in jail, they got lost- forever, they got terrible diseases and got taken from behind by bigger inmates and...

You watch too much godsdamned TV, go back to sleep, damn you. 

Rumple was in no frame of mind to consequence the catastrophizing of Mr. Gold.

A prison cell is for quiet and thinking and planning. And resting, Rumple told his anxious bedfellow. So shut the hell up and go back to sleep.

Mr. Gold took several deep, supposedly calming breaths. Rumple conked out again before he had finished three repetitions.

Whether both forcibly slept when one did, Rumple did not know, but he came back to consciousness when Miss Swan's keys hit the desk and she heaved a miserable sigh.

Well, he did empathize, completely.

Mr. Gold's heart rate shot up and his mind began churning again.

Rumple wanted to go back to sleep. The clock, depressingly, only read half past nine.

The unmistakable scent of warm maple glaze wafted into his cell and he sat up. Mr. Gold's eyes locked on the box of donuts Miss Swan had all but climbed inside as she deliberated over which to devour first.

He almost made some quip about cops before Rumple clamped a figurative muzzle over his gob and seized control away from the other man. But even Rumple could not tear their gaze away from the source of the delicious aroma.

It had been a very long time since their last meal and he had spent most of last night out in frigid temperatures. However, and to spite Mr. Gold, he remained silent and waited for Miss Swan to acknowledge him.

He would not ask. He would not behave in such an undignified manner as to beg for food just to alleviate a little temporary discomfort. And if Mr. Gold was uncomfortable, that was an added bonus.

You proud idiot! Mr. Gold railed at him silently. She will either have eaten all the maple bars or at least they will have gone cold by the time even you get hungry enough to ask. 

And you call me the childish one. Rumple scoffed softly at Mr. Gold.

At the noise Miss Swan's head jerked out of the donut box, a bear claw clenched in her jaws. Her teeth sank in deeply with her surprise and the remainder of the sugar drenched pastry began to fall.

"Good catch," Rumple murmured calmly as the sheriff nabbed the donut out of the air, saving her desk from becoming a sticky mess.

"G'morning, sunshine." At least that's what Rumple thought she said around her mouthful. "I hope you're in a better mood than you were last night because you kept me up past my bedtime. And that makes me cranky."

"In exchange for a pastry, I will assuredly be on my best behavior," Mr. Gold said, overriding whatever Rumple had been about to say and Rumple coughed to cover his reply, "Shut it!"

"What was that?" Miss Swan looked more closely at him.

"Forgive me Miss Swan, I am only just waking up myself." Rumple forced their eyes away from the box to pick at his fingernails determinedly. Mr. Gold imagined an exaggerated eye-roll in Rumple's direction.

"Fine. When I've had mine, you can have your pick of the left overs." 

With that and nothing more, like mention of bathroom privileges for example, Miss Swan sat down, took a long pull on her beverage and munched her bear claw followed by an old-fashioned with chocolate glaze and two donut holes before she acknowledged him again.

"Do you want the bathroom before or after breakfast?"

"Before, if you don't mind. A man of my age typically gets up in the night," Rumple lied. Mr. Gold had yet to suffer that affliction and if Rumple had anything to say about it, they never would. But seeing Miss Swan squirm was worth it.

"Oh, sorry. I'll get you a urinal, or something, for overnight." Her discomfort made it worth the deception. It definitely had the desired effect of getting her to hasten over to his cell and unlock the door. "Sorry for this," she continued as she drew cuffs from her pocket, "protocol."

Rumple used the bars of his cell in place of his cane to get to the now open door.

Miss Swan frowned witnessing this. "I'll have to help you down the hall. Your cane is evidence. I'll find something you can use later."

Good as her word, she supported him under his right elbow, and while awkward, he did not spare her any more than he would have his proper cane. Motivating her seemed prudent.

You'd rather displace your discomfort onto Miss Swan than have to acknowledge how much your behavior is embarrassing us both, Mr. Gold grumbled.

You do catch on rather slowly, Gold. Rumple wondered at how the man had ever managed to rule Storybrooke's property market without such obvious skills. I have no need to feel embarrassed about anything. I recommend you take the lesson to heart.

They had not quite finished in the bathroom when a familiar voice filled the small sheriff's station.

"I hear you made an interesting arrest last night, Sheriff Swan." Regina. It would be no one else, of course.

Very special, we get a visit from the mayor. Mr. Gold's discomfort would have been laughable if Rumple did not have to contend with it in such an intimate way.

I need you to get over your pride before Miss Swan comes to check on us. We own this town, no matter our temporary situation and the last thing I need is to have to spend my energies coddling you instead of beating Regina at this little game. I'm about to get my cup back and get us both out of jail, so kindly find some dignity and try it on for size. I dress to the left.

Rumple finished drying his hands and opened the door, "Miss Swan?" 

Emma brushed past Regina to retrieve him. On his way back to his cell, Rumple greeted Regina with all the warmth and sincerity he could muster, "Madame Mayor, what brings you here this morning? Someone key the Mercedes? Again?" Rumple answered Regina's gloating broadside of a smile with a toothy salvo of his own while he shamelessly used Miss Swan for balance. "Or is Pongo still using your rose garden as a latrine?"

Indignity is something we choose for ourselves, Mr. Gold, and I have no need of it.

Two hours later, the good sheriff dropped him off at his shop. When the doorbell chimed behind her, they were alone in the shop and in possession of Rumple's chipped teacup.

"You see? Barely any fuss at all and we have placed ourselves precisely where we need to be." Rumple asserted to Mr. Gold as he stowed the cup in his safe and locked it.

"What I see is us escaping your recklessness by way of discomfort accompanied by an acute case of shame and public humiliation. Just what do you think 'community service' will entail? You just handed Regina the means to destroy our reputation." Mr. Gold clenched his fist around the handle of their new cane.

"You mean your public humiliation and your reputation. No one else in town knows about me, aside from Regina, now, and she has been my pawn her entire life. I assure you that hasn't changed." Rumple smirked at their reflection in the glass display case. "Once the curse breaks, I will be free of whatever temporary discomfort may come with this community service business and it will be chalked up to Mr. Gold's temper having gotten the better of him over a stolen property dispute. Nothing to do with me. Regina will be far too busy with her own problems to say differently."

We need a shower, Mr. Gold dropped the subject.

Yes we do. 

On that much, they could agree.

***

"Don't let it blow away! We can't have the streets of Storybrooke looking like the ass end of a garbage dump!"

The February sky threatened rain or snow and only its fickle mood would eventually tell which. Rumple Gold had vacated his cell just over a week ago in favor of brisk and regular exercise. Upstanding member of the community that he was, he would attend to this community service for three hours, three times per week for the next six months. At the end of said period, there would be a hearing to determine the extent of his reform and contrition over his crimes. 

Just one more item to add to Regina's long list of offenses. She would pay all her debts; he would make certain.

Bedecked in an brilliant yellow and orange safety vest, he and his warden, Leroy of course, worked their way up and down the streets of downtown Storybrooke in search of the refuse, detritus and general putrescence left behind by their fellow citizens. Rumple searched and collected while Leroy kept up a steady stream of demeaning taunts and self-important chatter.

"I get to say if you're actually serving the community, Mr. Gold, so if you want this time to count, put some effort into catching that trash! That plastic bag better not end up in the ocean killing some whale all because you don't take your sentence seriously. Not on my watch, oh no, I, however, take my job very seriously. Best job I've ever had. I need to thank Regina again for this career builder. From janitor to steward of the environment..." It went on like that. The dwarf's self-satisfied grin nauseated Rumple Gold.

There are times when I hate being right, Mr. Gold nattered at him.

You are so easily riled. Ignore the stupid dwarf. 

Rumple snatched the wayward plastic and shoved it into the sack suspended from his shoulders by a sash. He feigned ignorance of the awkward show he must be putting on for the residents of Storybrooke between trying to manage the trash sack, his cane and the long handled trash picker while a dwarf nipped at his heels like a badly trained sheep dog.

If you are not embarrassed by this public display of groveling to Regina's might, you are defective, defunct and/or oblivious to the consequences of boot licking. You should not have agreed to this. We could have negotiated for something more palatable. A charitable donation to Regina's project of the week, for example. But you would not listen to the perfectly sound legal council in your own head-

That's quite enough, Rumple thought sharply. No, helping Regina build her empire at the expense of our own to save you some minor inconvenience for the sake of your pride does not serve our interests. This is not humiliation, this is giving Regina a false sense of security. You have never known true humiliation in your entire twenty eight year existence. I, on the other hand...

Rumple brought up some particularly distasteful moments of actual boot-kissing from his past to show his other half.

Mr. Gold squirmed at the taste of shoe leather so Rumple went on.

Yes, our damned ankle hurts, yes it's cold and yes the dwarf is an annoyance. But, instead of pissing and moaning about it, you could be spending this time anticipating the end of the curse and figuring out how to extract every last drop of our suffering from Regina. Last I checked, that was a priority of yours. Wouldn't you agree that that is a much better employment of our time and wit than whinging about how a little cleaning is beneath your dignity, you hypocrite?

"Are you even listening to me?" Leroy bellowed and Rumple paused in his pursuit of a bit of wet newspaper coated in what appeared to be vomit.

"The terms of my service were excruciatingly specific. They do not include listening to you. So no, I was not, nor have I any intention thereof." Rumple returned to his supply cart for a dust pan and broom which might scrape the sodden paper from the rough sidewalk sufficiently.

"Considering I can decide to tell the mayor that you aren't doing your job, I’d say that makes listening to my feedback kind of important."

"Since we both know that I am, in fact, keeping my agreement and there are plenty of passers by to bear witness, if you do that, I will raise your rent and make you homeless. So I suggest your evaluations should reflect the facts and not your easily bruised ego." Rumple and Mr. Gold both took some satisfaction at the silence which followed.

It did not last though. While digging under a rose bush near the post office for yet another doggie bag, a pair of footsteps pounded up the boardwalk behind him.

The sight of the mayor and the sheriff together with twin expressions on their faces gave him a pleasant thrill and he dropped the offending bag of excrement to address them.

"Well, well, well, is that the face of a believer?" Rumple's heart started pounding in his chest and his toes curled up in his shoes. Mr. Gold tried to hold their breath, but Rumple would not let him. They had to appear calm, even if they were anything but.

"We need your help." 

Emma, Rumple thought, was one of his better creations.

"Indeed you do. Quite tragic, what's befallen young Henry. But unfortunately, by order of the court, I'm rather tied up at the moment." Rumple did feel sympathy for the boy, certainly, but the smirk he directed at Regina contained none of that.

"You can finish after you help us," Regina snapped, her glower well worth the price of admission, "Leroy, go get coffee or something while we borrow Mr. Gold."

Once he had launched the Savior on her quest, Rumple took advantage of Leroy's extended coffee break to work his way back down toward the library and wait for just the right moment. He tried not to appear idle outside the Marine Garage across the street until Regina and Emma dashed inside the library, oblivious to his presence.

He waited five more minutes then abandoned his tools and vest. The purchased rope and duct tape he had recovered from his encounter with Moe French would come in handy yet again.

Oh no, we just got out of jail! Mr. Gold's anxiety soared. You won't get off with just community service for this one. We'll be behind bars for the rest of our life. You are completely beyond the pale!

Rumple ignored Mr. Gold's panicking and brought his part of their mind to stillness so he could focus on the task at hand.

Regina was so intent on the ancient elevator that she never heard him come in behind her.

In one smooth motion he clapped a hand over her mouth and shoved her against the wall with all the weight of his body to pin her there. She kicked his cane away from him and then her sharp little shoe connected with his bad ankle toppling them both when he lost his balance as he struggled to contain her. 

They rolled over and over across the floor until he managed to land on top of her. She tried to scramble away from him on her stomach, but even slight as he was, he outweighed her and she remained pinned beneath him. 

"Get the fuck off me, Rumple!"

"Not likely, your majesty," he sneered as he panted and she struggled beneath him. Her elbows proved unfortunately sharp in his ribs but his strength eventually won out. He trapped one arm, then the other, and finally trapped both wrists in one hand. Fishing the rope from his pocket proved to be a challenge until he tangled both her legs with his and finally subdued them, though, at that point, she proceeded to make whole body flops like a fish. 

Having had quite enough of this, Rumple seized her ear with his teeth. He bit down and she tensed all over immediately, shrieking. He tasted blood, but ignored that and the noise.

Oh my god! You've completely lost it you crazy cunt-sucker! Mr. Gold continued his irritating panic and Rumple carried on ignoring him.

It took some doing but he got a loop of rope around her wrists pulled tight.

Rumple gave her ear a deliberate last chew before letting go, spitting and then speaking, "Stop screaming, please." The silence fell like a cleaver hitting a cutting board. He spat on the floor again to rid himself of the taste of blood. It did not work though. "Now, I am going to tie you to a chair and you are going to let me, please."

"Why the fuck didn't you start with that? Did you really need to tackle me and bite my ear off?" Regina let him guide her to a chair and sat down to be tied up.

"No need to exaggerate. Maybe you didn't need to send a dwarf to supervise my service projects. I imagine we made our choices for similar reasons." Rumple growled at her as he bound her wrists to the armrests. "And I barely nicked your ear, nothing a new piercing won't cover up."

"I knew your true colors would show eventually, Rumple," Regina hissed. "You do execute an elegant lie, but I never doubted what you did to Belle." Regina was staring straight at him, but he could see the apprehension she was trying to hide behind the disgust.

A wave of heat and rage engulfed Rumple and he gripped her forearms tightly leaning into her face as close as he could get. He growled at her, "I am many things, but rapist isn't one of them. That's more your department and I'm certain Graham wasn't the first."

Mr. Gold's sudden and decided righteous fury stoked the furnace of Rumple's own anger.

Regina fell silent and looked away.

Rumple took the opportunity to duct tape her mouth. He ignored her stare as he retrieved his cane and stood by the elevator to work whatever pain he could out of his ankle.

I don't even know where to begin with you! Mr. Gold had taken up his caper again. You got out of jail a week ago and now you have assaulted and hog tied the mayor? I don't care what planet you think you're from, but this brand of nuts is going to land me in the big house for the rest of my days with no one but you for company!

Rumple blew out a sigh and leaned his forehead against the cool metal of the control panel. 

Do you remember our deal? If you are tolerable and useful, after the curse breaks, I don't destroy you the first chance I get. Right now you are neither tolerable, nor useful. The curse is about to break, so might I suggest you begin either getting your affairs in order or making different choices?

Mr. Gold's fear continued rolling around in their mind.

So long as he was quiet, as much as that was possible, though, Rumple would settle for calm, if Gold could remain calm, that would be enough for now.

Mr. Gold was thinking about how Regina's body had felt under theirs and how hot their blood had been. Never in his life had Mr. Gold experienced such a personal struggle. Subduing and beating Moe French had been a clinical endeavor by comparison. He had never tried to kill anyone and certainly had never succeeded. Rumple felt him poking into the memories of the many people who had died by Rumple's hand over the centuries again.

Are you going to kill her? Mr. Gold's voice filtered softly through the memories he was perusing.

No, I just need her quiet and out of the way temporarily. At least not right now. She'll pay for that little teacup heist of hers, but I don't throw away what could be useful without a very good reason and she's been one of my most productive pawns.

One of these days, you're going to make a mistake and it's going to be so bad you'll never dig out of it. How Mr. Gold seemed to be both musing and delivering a threat at the same time, Rumple did not know, but at least the man had stopped ricocheting off the inside of their skull.

You forget, I already made that mistake. It's why we're here in the first place. Without that mistake, you wouldn't even exist. Rumple enjoyed the cool smoothness of the metal against his skin.

It took Emma less time than he expected to signal for him to bring her back up. Of course he only did the job part way. 

Rumple smiled at Regina as he left with the ornate golden egg, freshly de-dragoned.

Safely ensconced in the back of their shop, Rumple liberated the contents of the egg and held it up for Mr. Gold's complete and detailed understanding.

With this, all our problems are going to go away. I will resume my rightful place as the most powerful person in Storybrooke, I will be able to kill whomever gets in my way, including Regina and fear no repercussions from pesky local customs of law. Magic is power and it may even mean the end of you.

Hard to believe you're the same guy who's nuts about a dead girl.

Start believing-

A voice called his name from the front of his shop and he only just had time to stow the potion in a pocket and stash the egg.

"I'm sorry but we're closed-" Whatever else he had planned to say in his polite yet caustic dismissal dried up along with his tongue.

Mr. Gold was right, he had utterly lost it. Back in his castle he had been nursing an acute, maybe protracted was a more accurate description, case of madness, but Rumple had thought his sojourn as Mr. Gold had settled his mind again. Apparently not.

Mr. Gold tensed up, clearly recognizing what- who- stood before them.

"I was told to find you, to tell you that Regina locked me up."

Rumple approached the apparition slowly. His hand shook as he reached toward her shoulder. Warm, solid flesh met his touch through a scratchy wool blend.

"You're real. This is her fault. She hurt you."

"I was told you'd protect me?" She sounded so uncertain.

Blood pounded in Rumple's ears and Mr. Gold's shaking overtook them both.

"Oh, yes." Tears choked off any further words and Rumple pulled Belle into his arms and pressed her tightly to his body. It only took him a second to notice then what his eyes had not even looked for a moment ago.

She did not fit against him as he had expected she would. In fact a large and firm roundness pushed against his lower abdomen as he clutched her tightly.

Oh shit. Mr. Gold's inappropriate eloquence went right by Rumple as he released Belle only to press both palms firmly against her distended midsection. Something nudged his hand from within.

This is impossible, Rumple thought, but the evidence moved beneath his touch.

Out of breath, Rumple jerked his gaze to hers. He was utterly at a loss for words with his mouth hanging open and tears wet on his face.

She wrinkled her brow at him gazing intently into his eyes, "Are you the father? Do I know you?"

Rumple's jaw quivered and he stumbled over his sob, "No, but I wish I was. I'm so sorry. You will know me, soon, I promise. Of course I'll protect you."

They both looked down to where he had begun to rub slowly over the spot where he had felt motion. It took a quiet moment before Rumple removed his hands and took a step back. He blinked several times. She watched him uncertainly, what looked like confusion on her face.

Mr. Gold recovered enough from his own shock to interject. You wish you were? You wish you were?! You had better not be thinking of, oh no, you can't. No way. I forbid it! We are not taking in some other man's by-blow. I will not-!

I will fucking end you.

For the first time since waking in Storybrooke, complete silence reigned in Rumple's mind. For a moment anyway, before Mr. Gold's quiet, diffident reply drifted forward.

What are you going to do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while... but I haven't given up on this fic. I just got stuck, then became otherwise distracted by new shiny fics to write. I feel a little bit bad for Mr. Gold just now. His world has been completely upended and he has a really cranky roommate. But more importantly, I hope you are as thrilled to see a certain someone as Rumple is.


End file.
